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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27364312">Don't Look Away</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/radstarmuffin/pseuds/radstarmuffin'>radstarmuffin</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Rune Factory (Video Games), Rune Factory 4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>(as always with me lol), Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Canon-Typical Violence, Canon-adjacent, Explicit Language, M/M, Multi, Swearing, almost forgot, apparently angst? there's angst here?, but ye vaguely kinda follows events from canon, i think i'll just update character tags when i get the other chapters up, my only two states of being are tragic backstory and humorous idiot banter, that should be a tag i think lol, they WILL be Happy. ...eventually., until you touch them for the 1st time, you can't see color except the color of your soulmate's eyes</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-11-03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 16:27:15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>23,801</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27364312</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/radstarmuffin/pseuds/radstarmuffin</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Doug's fine. Doug. Is. Fine. He's fine when he follows Lest to the Water Ruins, he's fine when they fight the rampaging monster sealed in the Rune Spot, and he's especially fine after they defeat it.</p><p>Dylas is not fine. He wakes up someplace he doesn't recognize, not even a little bit, and he can't shake the feeling that everything is wrong somehow. If only he could figure out why.</p><p>Lest doesn’t really know what a baseline “fine” is for him, if he’s being honest. He thinks he’s starting to figure it out, though.</p><p>~ Written for the "soulmates" prompt from the RF Writers discord! ~</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Doug/Dylas/Lest (Rune Factory)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>19</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. If a tree falls in the woods and my soulmate isn’t there to hear it, is it still green?</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Tentatively I'm saying this should be about 4 chapters long, but... last time i made a guess about how long something would be i was short by about 80k words, SO.  xD</p><p>The absolute HUGEST of shout-outs / thank-yous to <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/kindlystrawberry">Ben</a> for being an awesome beta reader / friend / excessive-AUs-enabler and for hyping me up to write this one specifically. She keeps plugging my fic so I shall be finally enacting karma by highly, highly recommending <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27289027/chapters/66673420">her fic, Blue, for this same prompt.</a> If you like Arthur/Frey and wanna have a good/bad-in-a-good-way time, definitely check it out!!!!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Doug’s fine. Doug. Is. Fine.</p><p>These things happen. Sometimes, these things happen. Right?</p><p>Well, they must, because they already did. In fact, here are things that have happened to Doug so far today:</p>
<ul>
<li>Doug woke up to the sound of that haunted voice coming from the Water Ruins. He knows Granny and the others have been calling it “voices,” plural, but he’s not sure where they’re getting that impression from, because it really just sounds like one voice to him.</li>
<li>Doug—by chance! he’s not actually <em>that</em> bad, okay?—caught sight of his apparent nemesis coming out of his <em>actual </em>foe’s chambers, all geared up and determined-looking and heading directly out the front gate of town.</li>
<li>Doug—on purpose; he is <em>this</em> bad, but it’s for good reason, right? (and there’s no way he’s the only one of the two of them who’s lying, anyway)—followed Lest out of town, past Yokmir Forest, and all the way south to the damned Water Ruins themselves.</li>
<li>Doug jumped in to save his “enemy,” the person who by all rights he should be trying to stop, when said person was too distracted to bother taking care of himself. How can someone who’s supposed to be competent and important and scary powerful not notice a freaking goblin of all things creeping up on them? Didn’t this guy ever learn to watch his back? (Probably not. If he had, the Sechs soldiers on the airship wouldn’t have been able to do what they did in the first place.)</li>
<li>Doug didn’t leave. He <em>should</em> have. He <em>meant</em> to. But no. Somehow, instead, he got wrapped further up in this shit because… of fucking course he did.</li>
<li>Doug, instead of leaving, continued to watch Lest’s back since the asshole clearly wasn’t going to do it himself, and somehow Doug ended up exploring the whole damn Water Ruins together with this fucking Earthmate, the one person with the supposed power to dismantle his <em>entire purpose </em>for, well,<em> being</em>. He explored the whole fucking place, including…</li>
</ul><p>Including the place where he is experiencing the thing which is happening right now, currently. The <em>stupid, idiotic</em> thing Doug should absolutely not be doing, the thing that absolutely should not be one of those things that “just happens.”</p><p>So, finally, the last thing that has happened to Doug so far today is this:</p>
<ul>
<li>Doug is inside yet another one of the so-called “Rune Spots” for more than just reconnaissance—only this time he’s here <em>before </em>Lest does whatever crazy fucking Earthmate magic bullshit he did the last time with the butterfly monster in the forest. And, speaking of—</li>
</ul><p>“Doug! <em>Watch out!!</em>”</p><p>He doesn’t, at least not literally, because he is entirely too busy dodging out of the way of an angry, charging, electri-fucking-fied overgrown unicorn-pony monster <em>thing</em> to actually have any time to spare for “looking” at much of anything at all.</p><p>Doug’s barely managed to roll out of the way when the damn thing pulls itself to entirely too quick of a stop and whirls around to stampede at him again. This time, while Doug breaks into a full-tilt sprint around the outer edge of the room, Lest pulls out a sort of passably-crafted magic rod of some kind and manages to blast a charged-up wind spell at the monster to knock the thing off course before it can catch up to Doug with its far superior four-legged horse-speed and trample him to a bloody pulp.</p><p>Doug takes a half second he may or may not have to catch his breath and hastily wipe some of the sweat from his brow before it can drip down into his eyes.</p><p>This is so. Incredibly. <em>Fucking</em>. Stupid. But also, Doug doesn’t want to…</p><p>No. Doug <em>can’t</em> die, not yet, and <em>certainly </em>not like this. If he really has to die to any of this goddamn insane mad-grab-for-power bull, he at the very least wants to be able to look into <em>her</em> eyes while she does him in, to make sure she knows the full scope of his malice. If he has to face everyone as a failure, he wants to be able to tell them he managed to land even one single hit to avenge them.</p><p>Which essentially means: sorry, Horse Monster, but Doug’s just going to have to win. That is, if <em>something else doesn’t do him in first—</em></p><p>Doug yelps and scrambles out of the way of a wayward blast of electricity—not from the monster, which absolutely can do and has been doing essentially the same thing all this time and could have been expected to continue doing it—but instead from the mediocre staff Lest is clutching tightly in his hands.</p><p>“Hey, watch it!” Doug shouts, only realizing he maybe shouldn’t intentionally draw any extra attention to himself a moment too late.</p><p>It doesn’t seem to make much difference though, not when Lest is the one who has to dodge out of the way of a very dangerous and painful-looking hind-legged kick that Doug would swear could easily shatter a few bones if it connected. But, because this is Lest, the fucker also has to opt to bop the fucking deadly monster in the side of the head as he dodges past it. He’s patently suicidal. Doug <em>really</em> shouldn’t be helping him.</p><p>“Sorry!” Lest yells back, sounding way more calm that he has any real right to. “I keep forgetting which spells I put onto which of these things!”</p><p>Doug would like to reiterate. <em>Way. Too. Calm.</em></p><p>Out of the plethora of ways Doug has imagined himself dying the past few years, he has to admit he never saw it going quite like this. He could, of course, just Escape out of the Rune Spot and leave Lest to win or lose or run on his own, pray that the entrance of this chamber stays firmly sealed the way it had been before they (before Lest, more accurately) got here, but if he’s learned anything from this fight, it’s that Lest himself is nothing if not determined, and despite everything (despite <em>everything</em>), Doug can’t just leave him here. Enemy or not, this guy…</p><p>Or maybe that’s it. It could be that Lest is both more perceptive and a better liar than Doug’s been giving him credit for. This could of course all just be a setup, the final punchline in the absolutely laughable joke that has been Doug’s life. Maybe Lest is merely toying with Doug the way a predator toys with prey, but like, the baby kind of prey that hasn’t had the chance to grow in horns or anything worth shit to protect itself with. It’s possible.</p><p>“Doug, I’m going to draw its fire, run around behind it and see if you can get a couple hits in!”</p><p>Possible, if not particularly likely. The shittiest part of the whole Lest situation is that this guy is just so damn <em>likeable</em>. It fucking SUCKS.</p><p>“You got it, boss,” Doug mumbles under his breath, not missing a single second of the irony in the statement.</p><p>He does as he’s told, though, taking advantage of Lest being an entire-ass reckless idiot (which, coming from Doug, is <em>saying something</em>, okay) to run up while the monster’s attention is focused away, and annoyingly, it <em>works</em>. Doug gets in the last few hits they need, and the monster goes down hard.</p><p>“Fuck yeah!” Doug cheers, even though he knows in the back of his head that any victory for Lest is actually a loss for himself. Still, he can’t help it if it’s a little satisfying to see the monster go down after all the work Doug put into making sure it—<em>isn’t actually dead?!</em></p><p>“FUCK,” Doug swears, stumbling back towards the wall as the monster <em>stands back up</em> and roars at them yet again. Did this thing fucking <em>play dead?!</em> They aren’t allowed to do that, are they? That’s just bullshit, the thing was down, Doug saw it collapse! The smart thing would be to keep his mouth shut and just deal with this, but Doug has never claimed intelligence was his strong suit, so he can’t help but complain, “Screw this. Lest, if this thing turns into a person like the last one, I say we fucking leave their ass out here to rot.”</p><p>Lest laughs, startled but genuine all the same. Has Doug mentioned that it sucks that he has a good sense of humor and a nice personality?</p><p>Lest starts replying, “I’m not so sure…” but he never gets to finish his thought, because suddenly a maniacal warhorse is charging straight at his face. <em>Again</em>. Cheater.</p><p>Doug wishes he could say he’s more help than he actually is when all’s said and done, but what is he supposed to do when there’s some uber-powerful Rune Spot monster that straight-up refuses to die coming after him mercilessly? The most he can do is just hang on for dear life while Lest does what Lest does best and takes care of this shit. And if Doug looks any less than cool and composed while they struggle to maintain the upper hand, the only person around to see it has more important things on his mind, like Not Dying.</p><p>Well, unless the monster counts, which it of course doesn’t.</p><p>And when said monster goes down a second time after a particularly well-timed spell cast by Lest, Doug makes a point to go and stand over the thing with his sword drawn to its throat, just in case. Fool me twice, and all that.</p><p>This time, though, there’s a flash of light to signal the monster’s return to the Forest of Beginnings, and when it clears this time, there’s no asshole horse standing back up again when it should be gone. Instead, Doug now has his sword pointed down at the pale neck of a <em>person</em>. A human man, if the sword were to his own throat and Doug had to guess, but it’s kind of hard to say for sure, because they’re missing those signature human ears, and the style of their clothes and hair aren’t really what Doug’s come to expect from humans during his time in Selphia. Not that they’re not <em>human-ish</em>, per se, and Doug’s pretty sure if he’d met this guy a couple years ago he absolutely wouldn’t have noticed anything strange at all, but… something about it is just <em>off</em> enough. At the very least, this person isn’t your average everyday human.</p><p>…As though the whole <em>they-just-transformed-from-a-monster-into-this</em> wasn’t enough to tip anyone off to that. Or, for that matter, the whole reason behind Doug’s hesitance re: this person’s humanity—as previously noted, they don’t have human ears, but what they have instead are fluffy animalistic ears, a darker shade than the rest of their hair, that stick up from the top of their head. And that’s not even mentioning what appears to be a tail, either.</p><p>Butterfly monster turns into girl with butterfly wings and antennae, horse monster turns into person with horse ears and a tail. Yeah, sure, that checks out. Why not.</p><p>Doug hasn’t actually moved, so he’s still—very much more lethally, now, seeing as people don’t have the same Forest of Beginnings resilience as monsters—pointing his sword directly at this person’s throat. It’s only for a second, and Doug isn’t sure if he’s proud of it, or how he truly feels about it at all, really, but the fleeting thought that he could do something, take a stand, make a move, right here and now, brushes up against his impulse control and lingers there just long enough for him to feel uncomfortable about it.</p><p>So when Lest rushes forward to check this stranger over for injuries, Doug abruptly yanks his sword away and takes a healthy three steps away to hover closer to the entrance of the chamber, and he definitely doesn’t think about how much trouble he could save himself if he took advantage of Lest’s kindness to attack him while his back is turned, while he fusses over the only other person here, who is conveniently unconscious already.</p><p>He doesn’t think about how willing Lest has been all day to completely leave all his blind spots open to a total stranger, someone he’s known not even an entire season, he doesn’t think about how many more chances just like this he’s technically had, because he… just can’t.</p><p>Because Lest is kind, and far too trusting, and he always seems so sincere, and Doug is just… weak, when it comes right down to it. Selfish and suspicious and a liar.</p><p>Doug’s hand is shaking, but he doesn’t trust himself to do anything with his sword because he’s either going to put it away in its sheath at his belt or he’s going to put it away <em>in a living, breathing person</em>, and he doesn’t even know which of those is more disappointing. Or worse—he does, but he doesn’t like what the answer is.</p><p>Either way, he tries not to think about it too hard. Lest kneels next to the person and puts a hand to their neck to check for a pulse, and Doug doesn’t think very hard at all about how they both have beating hearts, nor about how quickly his own is racing.</p><p>
  <em>Thump, thump, thump. Breathe in, breathe out. Squeeze handle of sword, shaky pale knuckles pressed to shaking leather grip pressed to solid tempered metal pressed to a shaky breath and an empty hope.</em>
</p><p>Lest makes a small noise of what seems to be approval as he moves his hand from neck to shoulder and gives a small shake.</p><p>“Hello? Can you hear me?”</p><p>Unlike Amber, who did respond at first back in the Rune Spot in Yokmir Forest (to Lest, while Doug awkwardly squatted past the treeline and watched like a creep—or, no, like a <em>spy</em>, of course), this person doesn’t so much as twitch. Doug isn’t sure whether to be relieved or concerned.</p><p>His heartbeat pulses in his fingertips and he doesn’t think about blood, sweat, and tears nor about the joke his mother made when she gave him this very sword, currently oh so close to his racing blood beneath his skin, he doesn’t think, he doesn’t.</p><p>Doug is, as ever, fine.</p><p>
  <em>(Doug is, unfortunately, unfairly, the one who’s still fine.)</em>
</p><p>Doug’s grip is so tight it’s a wonder he doesn’t cut himself even though he’s not holding the sharp part of his weapon, but that’s fine, too. The person who evidently was, up until now, a crazy horse monster who enjoyed yelling into the night—and, ha, see? Doug was right, it was only one voice. And if Doug can still be so right about things, which of course he <em>always</em> is, clearly it’s just fine.</p><p>What was Doug thinking about again?</p><p>Oh, right. Horse-man.</p><p>Lest’s frown deepens a little as he gives up on the shaking of the shoulders and sits back on his heels.</p><p>“Their pulse is steady, and they're breathing, so I think they're okay, but…” Lest starts, looking up at Doug, as though he thinks Doug’s opinion on this matter is crucial.</p><p>The question in his eyes is excruciating, actually. How does Doug answer that? <em>Yeah, this person, they’re fine, as in they’re attractive, I guess; and me, I’m fine, as in I’m doing alright, because why wouldn’t I be; and you, you’re fine, as in you’re helping the person who burned down everything I knew and loved and had, and you do it with such a kind smile on your face that all I can do is smile back and hope the best for you anyway, even though I know you’re probably lying to me, even though I know you’re better and stronger than me and that I’m going to lose to you, as inevitably as the sun will continue to rise.</em></p><p>How Doug answers is actually much simpler than this. He says, “Let’s just get them to Jones, then. If it’s anything like what happened with Amber, he’ll be able to take care of it. And I could really use a bath after this.”</p><p>Doug loosens his grip and takes a deep breath and tries not to lose it when he hears how calm and even the sound of his own voice is. Is it even his anymore, if it’s this far detached from his own thoughts? Then again, since Doug is <em>fine</em>, clearly his voice, also, should be fine. And so it is! Checks out. Hasn’t he been saying this the whole time? Every single fucking thing about this situation checks out just fine.</p><p>Lest chuckles a little, not as full-bodied as it might normally be but also obviously not just pity, and it takes Doug a moment to realize that he’s laughing at a joke that <em>Doug made</em>. Right, of course. Jokes. Good. Fine.</p><p>“Yeah, you’re right. We should get them back to town first,” says Lest, who is looking over the prone stranger with just a hint of despair. Not without humor, he purses his lips and continues, “…Kinda sucks that they’re so much taller than Amber was, huh?”</p><p>Doug looks them over again. It’s kind of a bad angle from the wall where he has been hovering, so he takes a couple hopefully-not-noticeably shaky steps closer to do it properly, even though part of him is screaming that this is really not a good idea, that it’s already far, far too easy to like Lest and Amber. That he does not need to be letting his guard down around any more strange Native Dragon-affiliated folk. But it’s really too late because he’s already here, and he’s already looking.</p><p>What he sees is, indeed, a very tall person. Which, thankfully, is actually a point against them. At least Doug can hold his own next to Lest and Amber, thank you very fucking much.</p><p>They’re wearing some kind of dark suit and a vest, and their skin and hair are comparatively very light. Looking closer, Doug can see they have freckles scattered across their pale skin, as well as a scar that looks like it was once probably quite serious but has since healed very well stretching down their cheek and just kissing the base of their jaw.</p><p>Their hair is actually a pretty similar shade to their skin, excluding the horse ears and the lighter tufts sticking out below them. Doug knows, logically, that their hair and skin are almost certainly different colors, but that doesn’t really mean much when the only thing Doug can tell for sure is that they aren’t blonde and they probably don’t have jaundice. Good for them.</p><p>There haven’t been many times Doug has particularly cared about not having full color vision, and now certainly isn’t anything like the last time he really thought about it, but he finds the thought idly crossing his mind as he takes in how prettily this stranger’s hair is haloed out around their head on the stone floor and wonders in what way it differs from the face it’s attached to, aside from texture. It looks…soft. How unfair a contrast it is to the murderous rampaging beast he and Lest just wrestled with for what felt like aeons.</p><p>Why Doug’s mind has gotten stuck on <em>colors</em> of all things, right at this very second, is beyond him, but honestly as far as all of that goes, this is really the least-interesting place to be. There’s basically nothing in this whole place with its stone walls and water canals that’s close enough to the color of Doug’s soulmate’s eyes for him to be able to discern any differences, and that includes Mysterious Horse Dude.</p><p>They aren’t wearing anything remotely close to yellow, but maybe that’s to be expected. In Doug’s experience, most people don’t really wear yellow casually, even if they can’t see color. Evidently clothes just aren’t usually made to be yellow. Doug doesn’t know what any other colors look like, of course, but he wonders sometimes if the reason people don’t like to wear it is because it’s so hard to ignore. Although, surely anyone would feel the same way about the only color they can see. Of course that would be hard to ignore. So maybe Doug’s just biased.</p><p>Lest shifts closer to the mystery monster person, and the movement draws Doug’s attention his way.</p><p>Now, <em>Lest</em>, on the other hand, of course Doug should figure this guy wouldn’t mind standing out a little too much.</p><p>Well, okay, his hair isn’t really his choice, since he definitely doesn’t dye it, and even then Doug can tell he isn’t as blonde as, say, Arthur is. Lest’s is either just duller or it’s some combination of colors Doug’s limited vision staunchly refuses to perceive until he meets some arbitrary standard of Person He’s Compatible With, or whatever. Soulmates have kind of lost their appeal, these days.</p><p>So Lest is blonde, or blonde-<em>ish</em>, blonde-adjacent, and Forte and Margaret are more classically blonde, which Doug has come to learn means that their hair is <em>sort-of</em> close to yellow, but not actually yellow, because blonde is <em>different</em>. Somehow. It’s a confusing word, and Doug will curse humanity until his dying day for making things so damn complicated. <em>Blonde</em>-this and <em>brunette</em>-that, but then it’s <em>redhead</em> or <em>purple-haired</em>? What the fuck, humanity. Doug doesn’t even know what any of those other colors look like or what exactly those words refers to, but he knows the words <em>exist</em>, okay, and that in and of itself is incredibly vexing. Doug knows next to nothing about color, but he knows dwarves have a much better system for describing colored things. Which is to just. Say what color they are. Like a sane person?</p><p>And then there’s Arthur, who Doug really needs to put in more of an effort to not awkwardly stare at, but he’s just so <em>bright</em> and he also usually has his head buried in a book so it’s not <em>that</em> weird. Or, at least, it’s not weird because he hasn’t noticed Doug’s weird behavior yet or confronted him about his weirdness, and Doug’s gonna fucking keep it that way if he has any say in the matter.</p><p>So, no, Doug doesn’t know if Arthur counts as blonde—technically he doesn’t know if any of them do, because what even are the criteria for that, really?—but he does know that Arthur’s hair is pretty dang yellow.</p><p>And, to bring this all the way back to Lest, who is currently now looking at Doug like he’s waiting for something to happen, the clothes that Lest fell out of the sky wearing have bright yellow accents along the top, over his shoulders and back and across his chest. So Arthur may take the colorful cake, but Lest isn’t too far behind, really. Of course, Doug has been watching Lest for reasons far removed from just his color, but…</p><p>Hm. Wait, <em>is</em> Lest waiting for something to happen? He’s looking at Doug expectantly, and his eyebrows are steadily drawing closer together like he’s trying to figure out how best to arrange his farm for a new harvest, and <em>ohhh, yes, great, interesting, exactly how long has Doug just been standing here and staring like a complete and utter jackass?</em></p><p>“Um… Doug? Can <em>you</em> hear me? Maybe I should be asking you if you’re alright instead of them,” Lest jokes, but there’s an edge of concerned sincerity under there that’s just the <em>worst</em> and Doug would like to not have to hear it at all.</p><p>In the hopes of avoiding doing just that, he starts saying the first thing that comes to mind, but in the end he doesn’t get very far.</p><p>“Of course I’m alright! Pfft, why wouldn’t I be, after, you know. Heh, actually—”</p><p>“Oh, shit! Doug, why didn’t you say anything?!” Lest says, jumping up and starting towards him far more quickly than he is prepared to deal with.</p><p>Doug very intelligently responds, “Uh?”</p><p>If the confusion isn’t evident in his voice, hopefully it is on his face. It takes Doug a moment to notice that Lest’s attention isn’t actually on his face, though, and it takes another for him to follow where Lest’s actually looking and spot the torn fabric of his sleeve and the dark stain of blood spread across it. Doug had completely forgotten, actually, the one solid charge the monster had gotten on him, head down and horn leveled to do as much damage as possible.</p><p>The feeling of it doing just that had been unpleasant, to say the least, and Doug can clearly remember shoving the thing’s head away with the heel of his free hand. And by “free hand” what he means is “hand that wasn’t connected to the arm connected to the shoulder that just got fucking impaled” which also happened to be his sword hand, so really it was more like using the handle of his sword to push the monster away. And of course, as soon as he’d done it, he’d realized how much more effective it could have been if he’d just used the sword for its intended purpose, instead, but by the time he’d thought of that he’d already been in motion to run out of the way of yet another incoming attack.</p><p>And then, of course, he’d had more important things to focus on, so he’d just sort of forgotten it had happened at all. If it wasn’t for the fact that he was now seeing exactly how painful it <em>looks</em>, maybe Doug never would have noticed it hurt at all.</p><p>Lest purses his lips. “I’m not the greatest at this yet, but I know a decent healing spell. Let me just try to help stop the bleeding and then we’ll get you <em>both</em> to the clinic.</p><p>Doug doesn’t even have the time to accept or deny the help before Lest is already pulling over the collars of Doug’s shirt and jacket and setting his hand on the exposed wound, blood be damned, which seems like a bad idea considering Lest has his gloves on and surely that isn’t going to be the most comfortable feeling in a couple minutes here, but Doug supposes that’s really Lest’s prerogative in the end. The healing spell is soothing even as the feeling of the magic fizzes under Doug’s skin, tangy, almost, if a feeling could have a taste. On top of that, the pressure of Lest’s bare fingertips on the skin of Doug’s shoulder and collarbone is warm and comforting in a way that makes Doug instantly and gut-droppingly re-aware of how tightly he is still gripping his sword in his hand, how focused Lest is on his spell, how easy it would be to…</p><p>“And, there! I think that should do it,” Lest says, looking up from where he’s standing much too close to Doug for his own good, doesn’t he know better? His blissfully unaware smile slips a little as he asks, concerned, “Hey, are you sure you’re actually alright? If you’re feeling dizzy or anything you should sit down. Do you need to Escape back to town?”</p><p>“Whoa, ouch, shoulder,” Doug winces, shrugging off Lest’s too-tight grip and twisting out of being so close, too close, to his wide eyes.</p><p>They aren’t yellow. This isn’t important, and is in fact something Doug already knew, but maybe his mind is a little scrambled because all he can think about is the fact that he’s pretty sure that was the first time Lest has ever touched him directly. If his eyes <em>were</em> yellow…</p><p>Well, Doug might potentially have had a whole new problem on his hands, one he <em>really</em> isn’t equipped to deal with at the moment, one that would be unfair on <em>so</em> many levels.</p><p>But thankfully, that’s not the case, and now that Doug is standing a little more firmly within his own bubble of personal space, tugging his clothes back to where they’re supposed to be, he feels like maybe he could actually breathe again. The way an asthmatic can. Like, when there’s fire nearby and the air is full of smoke and everything is happening too fast and too unthinkably and it’s just impossible to—</p><p><em>Breathe</em>. Right.</p><p>Lest is full-on frowning now, and Doug <em>probably</em> needs to say something before his eyebrows pinch themselves right off his face, but he can barely use his throat to suck air into his lungs right now. Maybe he should ask Jones about the asthma thing.</p><p>
  <strike>It’s not asthma, though. And he’s not about to tell Jones what it really is, either.</strike>
</p><p>“Doug—”</p><p>“I’m— fine,” he chokes out, because the only thing that could suffocate him any worse would be more of Lest’s concern. “Just, think that fight is catching up to me a little. Give me— I just need a second to catch my breath.”</p><p>If Lest can see all the hollow things in Doug’s chest collapsing in on themselves, he chooses not to comment. The worried frown continues to crease his face, though.</p><p>After what could be anywhere from half a second to half a year of watching Doug barely manage to complete one of the most basic functions of any living creature, Lest finally says, “Well… If you say so. It’s just, you know you’ve been really quiet all day? Don’t push yourself too hard, okay?”</p><p>And then he turns away, and kneels next to the Mystery Person again, and Doug almost can’t believe it because surely someone as kind and nosy as Lest isn’t going to just <em>ignore</em> someone as far out of it as Doug is.</p><p>But the more Doug thinks about it, maybe that’s not entirely accurate. Because the thing is, Doug has had a <em>lot</em> of practice pretending things are fine. And maybe it still feels like he’s one wrong step away from slipping off the edge of the planet, but it’s possible it doesn’t actually <em>look</em> that way, from the outside. At least, not anymore. Granny doesn’t fuss over him as much as she used to when they first met, does she? And if she’s the person Doug’s gotten the closest to in Selphia…</p><p>Well, Lest is practically still a stranger. And no matter how apparently perceptive and thoughtful the guy is, he seems like one of the most overly trusting people Doug has ever met, and that’s saying something because he also knows Vishnal and Kiel now.</p><p>Doug watches the yellow accents on Lest’s back shift as he moves, and Doug doesn’t fall, and Doug somehow continues to breathe in spite of it all.</p><p>Without looking down, he sheathes his sword. There are yellow accents on that, too, but he doesn’t want to see them right now.</p><p>Doug walks over as Lest leans forward and drops a hand onto his shoulder. Startled, Lest stops scooping Horse Guy and looks up at Doug instead.</p><p>Calmer than it has any right being, Doug hears his own voice saying, “Don’t be stupid. I saw you take those hooves straight to the chest earlier. If you think I’m going to let you carry them back on your own, you’re dumber than I am.”</p><p>Lest chuckles guilty and scratches idly at the side of his neck. “It’s not that bad. I can handle it.”</p><p>Doug almost feels settled back into himself again as he gives Lest the absolute least impressed look he possibly can.</p><p>“Yeah, I know you <em>can</em>, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to let you do it.”</p><p>“Well, I’m not about to let <em>you</em> do it. I literally just healed your shoulder.”</p><p>That actually gets a genuine laugh out of Doug. “Oh, no need to worry about that, <em>Your Highness</em>. I definitely wasn’t volunteering. No way in hell I’m carrying them all the way back on my own.”</p><p>Lest is frowning at Doug again, but this time it’s more frustration than concern, which is wonderful, actually. Doug can work with frustration.</p><p>“So… what, you just want to sit here until they wake up? I’m not going to leave them here.”</p><p>“For real?” asks Doug, because it just feels silly to have to explain something like this to someone as selfless and meddlesome as Lest is.</p><p>“Yes, for real! They need our help! I can’t believe you actually want to just leave them here, completely defenseless and—”</p><p>“No, not that,” Doug laughs, shaking his head. “We’ll carry them between us, obviously.”</p><p>Lest blinks at him, soaking that in. Like he really hadn’t considered it before Doug said it. Of course he wouldn’t have. Doug huffs at him and sets his hands on his hips and ignores the way his fingers brush against the hilt of his sword.</p><p>“Geez. How come it’s always you helpful types who refuse to understand how being helped works? Sometimes it’s just stupid to do things on your own when you don’t have to, you know.”</p><p>Lest quirks his lips to the side in a flat line. “I think I liked it better when you were being all quiet.”</p><p>Doug snorts, and he ignores the way some of the tension from before melts off Lest’s face as they joke around like this with each other. “Yeah, I wouldn’t get too used to that one if I were you.”</p><p>Lest sighs, over-exaggerated and put-upon and smiling, and Doug hurriedly directs his attention away to the handsome stranger on the ground and idly contemplates exactly how tall they are. At least six foot. 6’2”? 6’3”? Tall enough to be out of range of Lest’s menacingly good-natured aura? Surely not over a whole foot taller than Doug is, though, right?</p><p>“So, they’re definitely going to be dragging along the ground if the two of us carry them together,” Lest says, hand on his chin, apparently following Doug’s lead in height consideration.</p><p>Doug shrugs, but he doesn’t look at Lest at all so he can’t be sure if he even sees it or not. “Eh. They’ll survive.”</p><p>“Doug.”</p><p>“What?” He finally looks back over at Lest and can’t help rolling his eyes at what he sees. “Look, they’re the same as Amber was, right? Jones and Nancy both said she was perfectly fine physically; they didn’t even have anything they could do to treat her other than to watch over her. And mentally—other than the amnesia thing—she turned out alright too, yeah? I bet this is the same. They’ll wake up on their own in a couple days.”</p><p>Lest looks like he wants to argue, but he can’t seem to come up with any legitimate reason to take fault with what Doug’s saying. And of course he wouldn’t, because Doug isn’t wrong, and because Lest probably knows better than anyone what’s actually going on with these Rune Spot Monster People, and maybe he’s just playing Doug by pretending to be oblivious and nice and—</p><p>Anyway. Doug is legitimately pretty exhausted at this point, so even if he is being played like a fiddle he might as well go doubletime to get the song over with as quickly as possible. He walks around to the other side of the person, and after a moment’s hesitation, tightly grips the fabric of the closer lapel of their jacket.</p><p>He looks up and says, “I don’t know about you, but I think I could nap for hours. What d’ya say we get this show on the road?”</p><p>Lest mirrors Doug on the other side of the jacket with a sigh, giving up on trying to think of any other alternatives to Doug’s plan, if he had to guess.</p><p>“Yeah, you’re right. I should probably get back and talk to Venti soon anyway…” he mumbles, probably not even realizing what he’s saying, definitely not realizing who he’s saying it to.</p><p>Unless he does know both of those things. Unless he does. He might. If only Doug knew.</p><p>Not that that would really change anything…</p><p>Doug continues to not know as they work together to pull New-Amber up to a sort-of sitting position, first by pulling on their jacket and arms and then by wrapping an arm each around their back to support them once they’d initially cleared the floor.</p><p>“Okay,” says Lest, pulling one of Amber II’s arms over his own shoulders, “I think we should try to lift them by the, um.”</p><p>Lest pauses, and Doug feels more than sees Lest’s hand patting around by Amber Jr.’s hip, the one closer to Doug. He leans around their torso to raise an eyebrow, but Lest doesn’t notice. Or if he does, he chooses not to react. And, really, Lest only gropes around blindly for a short moment before his lips lift in a small, triumphant grin.</p><p>He continues, “Yeah, cool, by the belt. And then we can see about getting better balanced once we’re up?”</p><p>Doug mouths the word, “Oh,” and Lest gives him a scrunched-up look of confusion until apparently it clicks and his face darkens somewhat. He opens his mouth indignantly like he wants to say something in response that isn’t just a voicelessly mouthed syllable.</p><p>Innocent as all hell, Doug interrupts, “Gotcha. Let’s do this,” before Lest can say anything.</p><p>Lest definitely looks suspicious, but he doesn’t tell Doug off in whatever way he was planning to before. He watches quietly while Doug grabs Amber’s Water Ruins Counterpart’s other jacketed forearm and pulls it over his shoulder and finds the strap of the belt on their other side with his other hand to mirror Lest’s position.</p><p>After it becomes evident that Doug doesn’t seem to have anything more to say, Lest says, “Alright. Stand on three?”</p><p>“Sure,” he replies breezily, but compulsively, before Lest has a chance to respond, Doug can’t resist adding, “So, just double-checking, but you did say by the <em>belt</em>, right?”</p><p>“Shut up…” Lest sighs, but unfortunately for him his smile remains undermining-ly in place.</p><p>“Hey man, just wanna make sure no one ends up grabbing the wrong—”</p><p>“O<em>kay</em>, ready? One, two, three, stand!” Lest says in a rush, and he keeps good on his word, standing almost before Doug is able to get his feet properly beneath him. He barely manages to keep up with Lest as they both get to a shaky standing position, limp Horse Amber held up between them.</p><p>They haven’t taken a single step yet, but it is already extremely evident that this person was absolutely not built to be carried by people in this way, and especially not anyone Doug’s height, but, well, that’s just what they get. In their next life maybe they should just decide to be shorter, Doug’s not really sure what else to say about it.</p><p>Lest shuffles closer, and they both get better grips on the stranger. From the closer proximity, Doug can hear Lest take in a sharper breath, and he uses the arm snaked around their cargo to tap Lest in the side.</p><p>“You alright over there?”</p><p>Lest says, “Yeah, I’m good.” To his credit, he only sounds a <em>little</em> strained as he says it. “How’s your shoulder?”</p><p>“Fine,” says Doug, and mostly he means it. Doug had intentionally positioned himself on the side that’ll have the stranger’s weight on his uninjured shoulder, and after the healing spell Lest had cast, he really doesn’t feel too terrible. More tired than anything else.</p><p>They don’t talk too much after that. Somewhat awkwardly, they finally manage to drag all three of them out of the central chamber and back across the bridge at the entrance of the Water Ruins. Thankfully it seems as though they’d done a good enough job of thinning monsters earlier that they don’t have to deal with many of them on their way out, and when they do, a warning blast of magic is usually enough to send them scurrying away.</p><p>Doug doesn’t want to think about it too hard, because it kind of seems more like the monsters, even the ones out in the field outside the ruins, are all staying away from Horse Guy rather than from himself or Lest, and he’s not entirely sure what all that means about the people they’re bringing into town. He hadn’t thought about it when they’d brought Amber in, but it had been the same back then, too…</p><p>Doug’s foot catches on a root, and when he stumbles forward a little too much, he pulls awkwardly on The Mysterious Stranger and disrupts the balance he and Lest had been able to achieve with them between the two of them.</p><p>Fuck. Doug is really out of it today. This is what he fucking gets for not leaving immediately after he saved Lest from that stupid goblin.</p><p>Actually, after a whole afternoon of seeing the kind of hits Lest can take and mete out in return, there’s no way anything Doug did earlier “saved” anybody, so probably this whole day has been completely and utterly pointless.</p><p>“Sorry,” Doug mumbles, though he’s not entirely sure who he’s talking to anymore, or what he’s apologizing for.</p><p>Lest makes a small, soft noise, but he might more be responding to the ungraceful way their merry little chain of exhausted people is bumping around in the aftershocks of the first big jolt. Otherwise, he doesn’t respond. Doug wouldn’t be surprised if Lest hadn’t heard him at all.</p><p>There’s not really more to it than that, though. They’re still a bit of a walk away, and as much as Doug knows Lest could probably easily handle carrying this tall stranger all on his own, he’s already come this far, so he should probably just suck it up and see it through. No need to draw any extra attention to himself with such a dicey topic literally hovering in the air between them.</p><p>So Doug shifts his weight to resituate the passed-out freeloader whose ass he’s helping to drag back to town, and just as he and Lest start to find their balance again, the arm slung over Doug’s outside shoulder starts to slip, and so he reaches up to catch it before it falls and takes the rest of them with it, and really all he was aiming for was the guy’s arm, which is very much covered in a long sleeve, since all he wants to do is pull it back over his shoulder, but somehow either he or Lest takes an awkwardly out-of-sync step, and then—</p><p>And then suddenly—<em>horribly</em>—Doug’s day goes from just overwhelmingly shitty to <em>Absolute Worst Possible Case Scenario Disaster Living Hellscape</em>.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. If the magic touch touches on an out-of-touch nerve that you wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole, do you lose a touch of your sanity? Asking for a friend.</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>CW for some hardcore dissociation vibes in this chapter. Also, it got way more angsty for way longer than I was planning, which means - you guessed it - gonna have to add some chapters to the total count, lol. Who could have possibly seen this coming.</p><p>Also, yes, I am <em>well aware</em> of Doug's gay-ass crush on Lest, thank you. It's fine. As my dear friend and kindly beta reader Ben oh-so delicately put it, "I Really yeeted myself into multishipper hell on this one," and, well, we're just gonna have to deal with that when we deal with it. Oops.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Doug has a couple of immediate thoughts about color.</p>
<ul>
<li>It is <em>not</em> like yellow. Doug always kinda thought experiencing full color would just be, at its core, <em>Yellow Plus</em>. It is not. It’s so not, in fact, that Doug’s head is kind of spinning furiously in the undertow of a whirlpool of Not Yellow.</li>
<li>He likes whichever one it is that he’s currently walking through a forest of, the one making all the trees and the grass look so strangely foreign yet welcoming. Green, maybe? That’s, like, <em>the</em> plant color, right? Doug could probably just look at it for hours. He wants to touch it, which is stupid, because he’s touched <em>leaves</em> before, nothing about what makes a leaf a leaf is going to suddenly change just because Doug can see it differently.</li>
<li>There’s a chipsqueek running through the underbrush to Doug’s side, and he’s absolutely certain he would not have noticed it three minutes ago. Mostly because he <em>hadn’t</em>, but now it just seems so obvious. Who knew things could look so <em>different</em> just because of a little color.</li>
<li><em>Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh ohshitohshitohshit oh, SHIT, FUCKING SHIT FUCK—</em></li>
</ul><p>Doug’s fingers might as well be frozen solid to where they’ve latched onto the limp wrist of <strike>his soulmate</strike> this stranger, and it really truly takes everything Doug has in him not to drop to the floor or else to drop <em><strike>his soulmate</strike></em> THEM, this person, let them just slip off his shoulder and hit the ground. Or <em>else</em>-else to drop<em>kick</em> them, and then just run away—</p><p>“Um, Doug?” Lest asks, as though the world hasn’t just tipped itself upside down and flown off to bother some other sapient creatures someplace far, far away from here.</p><p>Doug’s kinda wondering whether his tongue has flown off as well or not, so instead of trying to use it he kinda vaguely hums, “Hm?” and hopes he doesn’t sound as faint as he fucking feels.</p><p>Lest gives him a weird kind of side-eye, and then he asks, “Er… is there a reason we’re stopping?”</p><p>Stopping? Oh. Huh. Maybe it’s Doug’s legs that flew off, because he can’t rightly say what they’re doing right now. When he looks down though, sure enough, there they still are.</p><p>…</p><p><em>There they still are, and there are his clothes, and there is the </em>color <em>of his shirt and shorts and SKIN and—</em></p><p>Doug’s head snaps back up, and he stares resolutely ahead. Nope. Not dealing with that yet. No thanks.</p><p>Also, he absolutely definitely looks crazy right now. This is crazy, right? Lest is staring at him. He does not <em>dare</em> to make eye contact, because even though he’s been able to see some of the color of Lest’s hair and clothes before, he can and <em>will</em> have a breakdown here and now in the middle of this random field—maybe he already is—but he can feel Lest’s gaze piercing the side of his face worse than the monster’s horn had pierced his shoulder earlier. So, what are the chances Lest has already figured out exactly what’s going on?</p><p>What if Lest has put two and two together and can see Doug’s shiny new color vision in the reflection of his eyes and he’s already realized that this person they’re carrying is—</p><p>Oh.</p><p>Oh, shit.</p><p>
  <em>Oh, fuck, no.</em>
</p><p>The chances that Lest knows are actually negligible in the face of other, much more overwhelming, data. Because, well. Doug doesn’t have any room to talk about putting twos or even ones together, because the facts are coming in, perhaps a little later than they should, and they are pointing to one cold, hard, scientific conclusion. And, like. Doug <em>knew</em>, of course he did. The problem is that now those facts are sinking in, that conclusion is drawn, and now Doug <em>knows</em>.</p><p>So. The chances that Lest knows? An unknown variable, a toss-up.</p><p>The chances that <em>the person half slung over Doug’s shoulder right now is his goddamn</em> <em>soulmate?</em></p><p>100%.</p><p>Listen. Doug doesn’t have many skills, but if there’s one thing he knows, it’s how to view a situation with his own best interests in mind. It’s how to block out the things he can’t deal with. To be stubborn about his perspective. To be stubborn in general, honestly.</p><p>Look—or, no, actually, don’t do that. Too soon.</p><p><em>Listen </em>to this second thing—Doug is fine with a little bit of denial. Sometimes, you have to recognize that the people you are helping and who are helping you don’t actually care about <em>you</em> that much, they just have some of the same goals, and you have to decide to ignore that. You have to decide to turn a blind eye to the way that, to them, it’s obviously all just a political move, a way to gain power and improve their own standing, and you have to focus on how you won’t be able to do anything at all on your own if you don’t stay on their good side. And, well, it’s easier to do that if you just think you’re all on the same side, and so, you decide you do.</p><p>Sometimes things like this happen because what else are you going to do about them? But then, just what’s different about this time?</p><p>Kinda hard to turn a blind eye to, you know, your <em>entire sense of sight</em>.</p><p>Slightly easier to ignore? The fact that he’s still just standing here, again, and even if Lest doesn’t know what’s going on with him there’s no way he’s going to think that Doug isn’t absolutely out of his mind. Probably about five moments too many today alone that he’s ruined his chances of flying under the radar, so, maybe he should just go the opposite direction and act like he’s such an impossibly incomprehensible weirdo that Lest starts avoiding him for that reason.</p><p>…Yeah, <em>s</em><em>lightly</em> easier to ignore. Still kinda… not very easy to ignore.</p><p>Doug takes a breath (had he been doing that before?) and then he thinks better of what he’s going to do and clears his throat before he starts saying anything. Because it’s certainly gone bone-dry, and not because <em>his soulmate, what the ever-loving fuck, </em>is really very pretty, and that’s—wait, shit—NO, it’s—<em>not</em> why, at all, was <em>not</em> what he was thinking about, or at least not befo—</p><p>Actually! Never mind. Maybe Doug wants to pretend to be a little sane still, after all.</p><p>“Sorry, sorry,” Doug says, finally, trying to loosen the death grip he has on the wrist in his hand before he leaves bruise marks or something. Trying to loosen up in general, because apparently he has gone very, very stiff over the past however-long they’ve been standing here. “I just… thought I saw something, over there,” he tilts his head vaguely toward the direction he’d seen the chipsqueek running, see, not a lie, “and then I… It reminded me of… something that happened… once. A long time ago. That’s all. Sorry, again, I, uh, didn’t mean to stop or anything. And here I said I was gonna make it easier on you to get them back on town by working together, ha ha.”</p><p>If his laugh and everything else about him sounds a little stilted, well. So?</p><p>“Oh. That’s…” Lest sounds, what fucking else, but concerned. Doug should get an award for how many times he’s managed to get Lest sounding all worried and sympathetic, he’s basically a natural at it.</p><p>Doug doesn’t really want to break his own record so soon, so he shifts the Very Mysterious Non-Amber Person Whomst Doug Has Absolutely Nothing To Do With into a better, more carry-able position, and then he takes a small step forward to pull the other two along a little and before Lest can finish his thought, he interrupts, “C’mon, I’m getting tired just standing here. How much does this guy weigh, anyway, amiright?”</p><p>The false cheer is actually kinda grating, even to Doug himself, but he’s maybe sliding further and further into desperate as he glances up over the treeline and realizes the sun is kinda setting and the sky is kinda <em>changing </em>an awful lot<em> and what the FUCK is that about?</em></p><p>Like “sunsets are beautiful” or whatever, okay. Doug’s heard it a million times. It’s the backdrop to a million crappy, sappy love story climaxes. But what the actual <em>fuck</em>. HOW does it do <em>that???</em> What even <em>IS </em>that?!?</p><p>Lest relents, although when he follows Doug’s lead so they can keep walking, Doug can feel how reluctantly he’s dragging his feet—nearly as much as the two of them are dragging Water Ruins Amber’s. Doug can still feel all of his attention being directed at him, but there’s not much else around here to focus on.</p><p><em>Unless,</em> he thinks hysterically, <em>this person is also </em>Lest’s <em>soulmate, and now he has color vision, too. </em></p><p>Doug could probably think of a few distractions he could throw Lest’s way, in that case.</p><p>To his credit, Lest actually stays quiet for a bit after that. But, unfortunately, it’s no doubt just so he can carefully debate what he should say. Because, after that minute or so of blessed silence, Lest does decide, and the thing he decides to say is just as bad as Doug figured it might be.</p><p>“Do you want to talk about it…?”</p><p>Doug taps on the unconscious wrist of the unconscious person unconsciously hanging between them and very consciously questions all the life choices he’s made that have led him to here. Isn’t his <em>~Tragic Backstory~</em> the <em>exact</em> thing he needs to keep secret, especially from <em>Lest</em>, of all people? Why the hell did he say that? Why bring up his own secrets in his stupid obvious excuses? Maybe the best lies are based in truth, but the best lies are also, you know, <em>actual lies</em>.</p><p>When Doug doesn’t respond right away, Lest continues, “No pressure or anything. But if you do, I’m a pretty decent listener.”</p><p>Doug almost laughs. <em>No pressure</em>. If only he could remember the last time he felt like he wasn’t already buried 6 or 12 or 20 feet underground.</p><p>Doug almost laughs, and then he realizes, fuck it, it’s legitimately kind of funny. After all, what has he done today except dig himself deeper and deeper into a pit from which there’s just no return?</p><p>So Doug <em>does</em> laugh, and while he’s doing it, he says, “Sorry, sorry. Again. It’s just— Ah, nothing. Really.“</p><p>If he wasn’t the picture of manic hysteria before, he really <em>really</em> doesn’t understand how Lest doesn’t see it now, but Doug still refuses to actually look at him so it’s a bit harder to tell what he’s thinking.</p><p>Doug can just <em>hear</em> Lest’s frown when he responds, “I’m sure it’s not <em>nothing</em>.”</p><p>It’s incredibly hard to resist full-on snorting at the understatement. Or, well. Maybe it’s not an understatement. Maybe it’s a completely accurate level-to-this-height-statement, considering that it really <em>is </em>nothing, now. There’s nothing left of Doug’s past, after all.</p><p>“Ehhh. Either way, I shouldn’t be complaining to you about…” How to word this? “…<em>family drama</em> when you don’t even remember your own damn family. Y’know?”</p><p>“Oh. But, no, that’s not imp—”</p><p>“Honestly, it’s fine. I’m just tired. Prolly not even saying things that make sense anymore; you can just ignore me.”</p><p>Lest sighs, quietly but not so quietly that Doug doesn’t catch it. With more than a bit of obvious reluctance, he relents, “Alright, I get it. I won’t pry, but just so you know, the offer still stands whenever, if you ever change your mind.”</p><p>It’s Doug’s turn to sigh, but whether it’s relief to have escaped the topic or disappointment to have missed the opportunity to talk about it is not something Doug feels very confident in figuring out. Because he’s not sure he wants to.</p><p>“Yeah, got it,” Doug replies, looking at the grass in front of them and not at the sky or at the people he’s with in the slightest. “Thanks.”</p><p>And that’s that. The rest of the walk passes in comparative silence.</p><p>And it’s fine, really, as it’s been all day, but then suddenly it’s really <em>not</em> fine.</p><p>Because, the thing is? The whole <em>sunset</em> thing was more than bad enough, but as soon as the front gate of town comes into view, Doug realizes just how extremely unequipped he is to deal with this.</p><p>It was <em>one</em> thing when he was overwhelmed by all the apparent “green” and whatever the FUCK is up with the sky. But now, he’s faced with the <em>castle in full view in front of him, </em>full-<em>full view, and it’s—</em></p><p>It’s…</p><p>Well, beautiful. There’s not much else he can really say about that. Obviously, it’s, like, a castle and all, and he really goes out of his way to <em>not</em> look at it most of the time, but…</p><p>Were the windows <em>always</em> so colorful? Of course, they weren't to <em>Doug</em> until now, but even in general. It just seems impossible. And the tile in the town square, and the roof—there’s more of that “green”—and.</p><p><em>And</em>.</p><p>If there’s anything Doug hates the most about Town Square, it’s the fact that the archway to the Dragon Chamber is just wide open all the time. Of course she would want to be able to keep watch and all, that seems about right, but Doug always feels the hair on the back of his neck raise whenever he has to walk across the square. He kind of hates festivals, but it’s not like he can just avoid those, so he always just sucks it up and distracts himself with the spirit of competition and all. Usually, though, he avoids it as much as he can. He might be lazy, but he’s not so lazy that he’s above walking up to Airship Way to go the long way around to the other side of town.</p><p>This is relevant <em>now</em>, of course, because the archway to the Dragon Chamber is wide open, facing the gates Doug and Lest are currently dragging Unconscious Monster Person Number 2 through, because Doug can’t just walk around the only gate on this side of town, because he has to walk straight forward and he still refuses to look at Lest or anyone else and he doesn’t want to chance having to see anything more than he has to and that means that the <em>only thing</em> currently occupying his vision is the castle and its central main chamber and—</p><p>
  <em>Green.</em>
</p><p>Doug takes it back. He does not like this color. He does not want to see another tree or bush or field of grass, and he does not want to touch it or stare at it for hours and he certainly, absolutely, <em>does not like it</em>. In fact, he can’t stand it.</p><p>And on that note, maybe Doug needs to make a getaway now, before they actually get to the clinic and he somehow gets roped into some kind of continued involvement in any of this shit. Nancy is blonde, sure, but Doug has no idea what other sorts of colors he’s in for there, not to mention that the chances a <em>medical professional</em> notices what’s going on with Doug is even more likely than Lest noticing it. Perhaps infinitely more, knowing both Lest and Jones, and <em>especially</em> knowing Nancy.</p><p>“Ah, shit,” Doug starts, hoping the dull banging of his heart isn’t audible every time he opens his mouth, the erratic drumbeat of a child attempting to play a big booming dwarvish tenor drum for the first time to the amusement of their parents and irritation of their neighbors. “Shit. Sorry, Lest, I gotta go? I completely forgot, but there’s something— There’s something I need to go do. Fuck, uh, my bad, but do you think you can take it from here?”</p><p>“Huh? Oh, yeah, I mean, that’s fine, but…” Lest looks at Doug again, and this time Doug knows he has to give in and look at him right back, or there’s no way he’s going to get away with this.</p><p>So, he finally, terribly, turns his head to the side to meet Lest’s eyes, and he does his best to not crack his teeth by clenching his jaw too tight or snap Unconscious Guy’s wrist or waistband by likewise clenching his fists.</p><p>The first thing he notices is how striking they are. Lest’s eyes. They’re different from everything else Doug has seen so far, which is just fucking great, but honestly not really surprising in the least, somehow. Doug always knew this fucker stood out, so, nothing new there. He wants to say the next thing he notices is Lest’s hair, how he knows now why it always looked duller than just yellow, how all he can think about is that it seems more than anything to be similar to all the <em>green</em> Doug has been seeing, how much his stomach clenches at the connection.</p><p>He wants to say that’s what he sees second, after Lest’s eyes, but he actually finds his gaze stolen elsewhere, first.</p><p>Horse Amber’s head is sort of limply hung forward, chin lolling against their chest. Their long hair is also mostly hanging off the front of their shoulders, partially obscuring their face, but not so much that Doug can’t see it.</p><p>He was right. Their hair really is a different color from their skin. Very different.</p><p>And something else he hadn’t known, before—scars are actually a different color from regular skin, too, apparently. Or, hm, maybe it’s just that there’s a way color can be darker or lighter but also be more or less colorful? Doug’s head is already swimming too much to think about this, though. No wonder it always seems like people who meet their soulmates for the first time have gone a little bonkers for the first week or two.</p><p>And, yeah, well. This guy’s hair is… <em>Well</em>. Against the contrast of their dark jacket, it’s even easier to see, and.</p><p>And, actually! You know what’s not fucking fair? Doug still hasn’t even seen their eyes! Sure, he knows what color those are already, but, still, the <em>one</em> warning he’s supposed to get for something like this, and. Fuck.</p><p>With great difficulty, Doug lifts his eyes back to Lest’s, which are both open and directed at Doug, even if they aren’t really the ones he’s busy thinking about, and he does finally notice Lest’s hair, but somehow it’s not as much of a revelation as it should be.</p><p>Doug’s just simply exhausted. It’s all too much. He’s ready to go sleep and never get up again, ever. Maybe he can find Clorica and she can give him some tips on doing things while sleeping so that he really doesn’t have to.</p><p>“Uh. Yeah. Sweet, great, well, I’ll just leave you to it then. Thanks a ton, I’ll make it up to you sometime.”</p><p>
  <em>Like, for instance, by stabbing him in the back. Either figuratively as an informant or literally with a freshly sharpened blade, Lest can go ahead and take his pick. Because all Doug needs is to make more empty promises he knows he can’t keep.</em>
</p><p>“Um, sure, there’s no need to— Oumph. Uh. Okay.”</p><p>Lest stumbles under the newly bestowed full weight of the person Doug has just dropped like a fucking sack of potatoes—actually, no, worse than that, because Doug would <em>never</em> dump a bag of produce so thoughtlessly for fear of incurring Granny’s wrath—which is, of course, extremely rude and terrible of him to do to Lest, especially without any kind of warning, but he just… Can’t.</p><p>He can’t stay here another second; he can’t deal with how his mind is reeling at the way all the things he didn’t know he’d been missing have been, for lack of a better phrase, colored in; he can’t keep holding up his—this—the <em>guy</em>, the Water Ruins Horse Amber; he especially can’t stand thinking about the way he doesn’t really <em>want</em> to leave. If anything, part of him wants to do the most unreasonable thing possible and offer to take them himself, and explain to Jones and Nancy <em>himself</em>, and to sit there and wait until they wake up and he can grill them on <em>why why why</em>. Why would— why <em>now</em>—</p><p>Why him?</p><p>He doesn’t know if this is the biggest cosmic joke the universe could imagine, or if maybe he’s the one who’s managed to fuck up the path of his own life so much that—</p><p>Well, no matter. Doug <em>can’t</em>, and so he won’t, and that’s that. Easy sneezy.</p><p>Doug tosses Lest a quick thumbs-up, aborted as soon as he realizes there’s no way he’ll be able to hide the way his hand is shaking but hopefully not so soon that it’s obvious that he’s canceling the action.</p><p>“Awesome, well, I’ll leave you to it. Thanks again! Later!”</p><p>Doug tries to scramble away, but unfortunately Lest turns those damn eyes of his on him and he’s just this side of transfixed. They look like— they’re kinda similar to his sou—<em>the unconscious person</em>'s hair, only… not? Why the fuck is color so damn <em>confusing?</em></p><p>But, yes, Lest is looking at Doug, and Doug is looking back because he’s stuck, as per fucking always, <em>stuck</em>, standing in the center of Town Square and trying to ignore the way he can feel <em>her</em> staring at them, because if there’s anything Doug can’t do…</p><p>The problem is, Lest doesn’t look annoyed at Doug, like he probably should. Again, Doug has absolutely no idea how manic he looks at the moment, nor how Lest could have possibly not noticed and subsequently called him out on it. However, Lest looks anything but annoyed at the now extremely awkward position he’s been put in, supporting someone much taller than himself who was already partially dragging along the ground from the fucking side all on his own.</p><p>Lest, instead, looks more concerned than before, which shouldn’t even be legal.</p><p>And Doug is caught in his insidious web of apparent care, so he can’t do anything but watch apprehensively as Lest rolls his words around his mouth before letting them hesitantly drop from his tongue.</p><p>“…Are you… Don’t… Don’t push yourself, okay?” he settles on, and Doug tries not to flinch as he does. It’s the exact same thing Lest told him earlier, in the Ruins, so it really shouldn’t take him by surprise or anything.</p><p>Because the weird tension in the air of the things Lest clearly wants to say but can’t figure out how to is going to drive Doug insane, he adopts a tone that is shockingly much more even and light than he feels like he should be able to with the way his insides feel like the sound of an extremely thin sheet of metal being wobbled back and forth over and over.</p><p>He says, somehow teasingly, somehow with a bit of a laugh, even, one he isn’t sure is really coming from himself for a moment, “I could say the same to you, man.”</p><p>Lest’s brows pinch, whether in guilt or because maybe Doug doesn’t sound as convincing to him as he does to himself, Doug can’t tell. Lest says, “Right. If you really have to go do something right now, I guess I can’t stop you, but… Promise me you’ll have Jones or Nancy look at your shoulder as soon as you’re done with whatever-it-is? I know for a fact my magic won’t have been strong enough on its own.”</p><p>He pauses, opens his mouth once more, and then seems to second guess himself and he closes it, pressing his lips together a little. Well, good enough for Doug. If he’s done, then there’s a chance to break free and run far, far away.</p><p>“Yeah, I, uh, I will, I swear. It’s just, I’m actually… late? I need to go check in on Granny?” Doug says, and it sounds more like a question than it should if he’s going for genuine and unsuspicious. “Didn’t realize it would, um, take quite this long when I left to— for my… Walk. You know. And she said she needed my help with something.”</p><p>Doug smiles lamely, and finds himself thinking about lies again, but it’s really far too late to crawl back out of this hole now, so. Might as well tunnel all the way through. Whether that gets him crushed in a cave-in when he digs out the wrong stretch of dirt supporting wall or free-falling out the empty air on the other end or boiled alive somewhere deep inside the world’s core, who can say.</p><p>Lest looks far from convinced, but he also has his hands very full, and if the burning at the back of Doug’s skull has anything to say about it, Lest is also in for a very long and important meeting in the castle even after he’s dropped off Doug’s— new… neighbor.</p><p>All it takes to break the weird, floaty standstill is the movement of Lest shifting to accommodate the awkward weight he’s impressively managing to support on his own. It means he takes his eye’s off Doug’s for a moment, whatever color they are sliding over to the kind-of-similar-kind-of-not color of The Dead Weight’s hair, and Doug is set free.</p><p>“Seeya, Lest,” he calls, sounding more cheery than he’s felt in a long time, maybe in part due to the intense relief he feels to turn around and not have to face either of them directly anymore.</p><p>Back safely turned, Doug doesn’t even bother (or perhaps doesn't dare) to look behind him, even as he half-heartedly waves over his shoulder, and he’s off to the only place he can think to go, even if he hates the thought of going there maybe more than he hates the thought of going anywhere else. Guilt trickles down his every nerve, but Doug’s never been a particularly good person, even before all of the… <em>revenge</em> business, so what’s to stop him from exercising an above-average amount of selfishness?</p><p>Doug can’t see Lest, doesn’t know if he struggles to pick the unconscious stranger up from where he was already at or if he puts him down to scoop him the way he’s been trying to at the Water Ruins or if he does the actually smart thing and gets them on his back somehow, but what does that matter to Doug?</p><p>Out of sight, out of mind. Not, unfortunately, out of range of hearing.</p><p>“Bye, Doug— Don’t forget to go to the clinic!” Lest shouts after him, sounding just a bit strained.</p><p>Doug swaps his stupid little wave for a stupid little thumbs-up: there, affirmative, heard you, no need to worry. And then he does his very best to not either sprint away as quickly and obviously as possible or else to allow his legs to give out and collapse into a heap right where he is. How he manages, he’s not sure, because frankly he doesn’t really remember.</p><p>Time goes kinda funny. It wouldn’t be the first time Doug’s done this, but for Granny’s sake if no one else’s, it’s been a little while since the last time. Or maybe that’s just the funny thing time does, too.</p><p>Doug knows he walks out of the Town Square, and really, it’s not a very long walk to the shop at all, but he knows he walks out and he knows theoretically he walks down the stairs and he can just <em>feel</em> the weight of eyes, hateful, evil, all-knowing eyes, eyes that have seen the exact moment Doug’s heart and soul were ripped away and turned to dust, who know that view that even Doug himself didn’t see, will never have the chance to know, a view that haunts his dreams but differently each and every time, because he’ll never know what it really looked like, how quickly or slowly he lost everything, which parts went first and which had the chance to fight back, which never even knew—</p><p>Theoretically, Doug walks out of the Town Square. Theoretically, Lest carries the unconscious stranger to the clinic, and when he’s done, he theoretically goes to the castle. To the place he belongs, whether or not he’s lying about not knowing it to have always been true. Theoretically, Doug enters Sincerity General, and he has a quick conversation with Granny, who is doing the least intensive evening closing duties on her own. And were it not this particular theoretical day, Doug would make an excuse about being starving and <em>is there any way they have any of that fried rice from the other day leftover in the fridge?</em> and <em>damn would it be nice if that could be heated up right now</em> because has he mentioned <em>he’s just starving</em> and on that non-theoretical day she would take the hint and roll her eyes and go upstairs and Doug would stay behind, ‘waiting for dinner,’ and of course he’d have to take his mind off that, somehow, so he’d finish the rest of the work because there’s not really anything else to do in the boring old shop, of course, and he can’t follow her upstairs because there’s a chance she’ll ask him to help her with dinner, and that would just be the worst, so he’s just gotta stall until she’s done.</p><p>Theoretically, Doug does not do this, but theoretically he also does not draw any unwanted attention for not doing it. He’s not sure how. It is a theoretical, after all, and there are lots and lots of holes in imagining theoretical situations, since you can’t know how they would really go, out of theory.</p><p>Theoretically, Doug makes it to his room and no one but Lest is any the wiser that he’s anything less than fine, but that’s just a theory, in the end. A guess.</p><p>Doug’s bed is very comfortable. That is not a theory. It’s a very extensively tested hypothesis, a factual research conclusion.</p><p>Doug’s bed is very comfortable, at some time, in some place, not in the same way but in a different one, and his aunt laughs and laughs when he demands that if his hand-me-down down comforter needs to be patched and fixed after it has torn, she just <em>has</em> to fill it with yellow feathers, instead, because doesn’t she know? They’re <em>yellow</em>, so that means they’re important, and special, and also they come from <em>ducks</em>, and that sounds like his name, so that makes them even <em>more </em>special! Because ducks are the best monsters there are, which is a fact, and Doug’s blankets should also be the best, so they need to be duck feathers, <em>pleasepleaseplease</em>, he’ll even go out to help collect them himself, he promises.</p><p>Doug’s bed does not have a yellow feather down comforter, but his comforter does, at one point, contain just a handful or two of the very best yellow feathers he and his aunt are able to find. And for all the time that it is possible, Doug’s bed is <em>always</em> carefully made—perhaps not necessarily in the absolute neatest, most perfect way, but carefully all the same—with a comforter that he refuses to put away, even in the hottest heat of summer, and Doug’s aunt laughs about it whenever she has the chance to.</p><p>Doug’s bed is very comfortable, even after that day when his beloved comforter and every— and the <em>feathers</em>, those, of course, Doug is referring to feathers only and not all of the other things he lost, nope, not a thought about—</p><p>Even when <em>t</em><em>he feathers</em> are nothing, nothing more than ash, softer to the touch and easier to sink into than ever, even after that, Doug's bed is illogically, inconceivably, still very comfortable. His bed and his room change size, shape, arrangement, location, and they are still his, and they are still comfortable, and still he sleeps in them. <em>‘His bed’</em> is comfortable, even now.</p><p>Doug does not dare touch it. He, theoretically, opens the door to his room, after he theoretically drags himself on dead feet up the stairs.</p><p>And then time un-funnies itself, and he closes his door, and he hears the sound of it click into its frame, and it’s no longer just an estimate of what it <em>might</em> sound like, and he can’t take another step, because it’s no longer just a possibility but actually something real and tangible.</p><p>Doug’s bed is very comfortable and there’s just no way he’s going to be able to stomach sleeping in it, so he doesn’t bother getting up off the floor. He drags his fingertips over the wood and finds himself thinking, unbidden, about those self-same fingertips resting against a bare wrist, and he’s too numb to be bothered by it, to ignore it and shelve it and then toss those shelves off a cliff.</p><p>What might he say to that stranger, not this new one but rather the one who had to be physically pulled back from running off in his excitement when he was proudly the first to spot the big duck nest in a cluster of rocky outcroppings near the quarry’s lake? The one who uncharacteristically waited patiently for the moment he was told they would be safe to approach it, because the family of ducks had wandered off together to go swim in the lake, the one who had just as uncharacteristically gone through the fluffy monster drop options left behind as meticulously as possible so that he could make sure he really did get the very best, the one who had hung around <em>inside</em> rather than playing out as he impatiently waited for the whole sewing business to end, watching perhaps the most boring thing he could imagine with a sense of real excitement.</p><p>He might say…</p><p>Maybe he could warn him. Don’t get too excited. Don’t think about someday telling someone this silly story and imagine that they might be flattered to hear it, if they don’t laugh at him for being so embarrassing first. Don’t get any hopes up about showing them the real actual proof of the thing. Maybe just forget about it entirely.</p><p>Or maybe the opposite? Enjoy it while you can? Do a better job hanging onto some kind of hope, because you really never know when you might need it, when it could help you not careen out of control and lead to you sitting on the floor of your room, pressed against the door but hardly able to feel it.</p><p>Nah.</p><p>There’s only one piece of advice Doug could ever think to give to that person. Even now that hasn’t and won’t change, and knowing the little stranger as well as he used to, the shittiest thing is that it wouldn’t even work.</p><p>
  <em>Don’t go. Don’t you dare go on that trip.</em>
</p><p>
  <em> <strong>Stop her.</strong> </em>
</p><p>Doug feels goosebumps crawl up his arms and down his back and he thinks that if that young person were here right now, he would be appalled by the depth of the hatred he will one day be able to feel.</p><p>That unfortunate inevitable future tilts his head back against the door now, in the present. Well, it feels like he’s just tilting it, but the sound it makes suggests it was perhaps a little harder and faster than a ‘tilt.’ Whatever.</p><p>He blows out a breath.</p><p>Sucks in another.</p><p>Traces the grooves in the floor.</p><p>Feels his hand catch on one of said grooves.</p><p>He looks down and finds that it’s because the band of his ring has caught on the edge of one of the slats, and suddenly he’s also very aware of the incredibly uncomfortable way his scabbard and belt are being pulled because he is wearing his sword still and has just dropped straight to the floor while also pressed against the door without doing anything to remove it.</p><p>Well, it is technically a very awkward angle for it all to be getting shoved in, but Doug should hardly be considered an expert on ‘uncomfortable’ at the moment. That would imply he has a firm grasp of what it means, and it’s hard to know what the un- version of a word is when you’re unable to conjure up the meaning of the original one.</p><p>Mechanically, he unhooks the buckle and pulls it off to set aside, excruciatingly slowly, the way you might with a bandage when you think it’ll hurt less than ripping it off all at once.</p><p>Maybe he avoided looking at it before, but he is no longer panicking, just, sorta going through the motions, so he doesn’t think to stop himself now. He can’t see the blade, since it’s still sheathed, but the hilt is fully exposed.</p><p>It’s beautiful, as always. It’s inlaid with delicate gold accents, much higher quality and far more intricately crafted than Doug could ever, <em>ever</em> hope to achieve with his own hands, and it’s— It’s—</p><p>It…</p><p>Doug stares at the thing, at this item he thought he knew so well. He stares and stares and stares and what he sees doesn’t change.</p><p>Doug stares, dumfounded.</p><p>He’s not… He <em>knew</em>, ok, better than probably everyone else in town, actually, that it’s possible to have a soulmate whose eyes are not particularly what people with color vision describe as ‘colors.’ He knows his own eyes are ‘silver’ even more surely than he knows that the sky is ‘blue’ and the grass is ‘green’ (which is probably for the best, because after that whole sunset business, he’s not sure how much he trusts any of those common knowledge things, anyway). He knows that ‘silver’ is just a sort-of ‘grey,’ kinda, but apparently <em>more</em>, somehow. <em>Different</em>.</p><p>Doug knows some things about metals. Sure, he doesn’t have anywhere <em>near</em> the kind of dexterity (or interest) that he would need to be a successful blacksmith or jeweler or anything, but he knows mining, and he knows things about what people who <em>can</em> do those crafty things think about and how they use metal and what’s good for what. He didn’t <em>try</em> to learn these things, but some amount of base-level knowledge is inevitable when your immediate family lives and breathes the stuff.</p><p>Hell, the only reason anyone had noticed Doug’s color <em>wasn’t</em> silver when he was young had been because he’d always had a fascination with gold, even though practically it’s not as useful as other things, nor as standard for the sort of silver-eyed pride that shone through the village in common ornamentation and motifs.</p><p>Presumably, all that stuff stands out more when your soulmate has silver eyes, too. And there are different veins of it, just like with ore—at least, from what he’s heard. Eyes just a slight shade different, a tad more reminiscent of things mined from <em>that </em>side of the quarry, or in <em>such-and-such</em> year. It was always fashionable and special and noteworthy if you could find some ore that matched the exact shade of your soulmate’s eyes, that you could use on your armor or weapons and especially for your rings. Doug never really got all that—but then, how could he have?</p><p>Because, apparently, all that silver stuff has always looked like…</p><p><em>This? </em>Truly?</p><p>No, not just the silver. The <em>gold</em>, too, that’s— It’s not the same, anymore. It’s not… actually, it won’t look the same ever again, now that he thinks about it, and that’s…</p><p>And, hadn’t he <em>just</em> chosen not to look at his sword again? When he’d sheathed it, centuries ago, back in the Water Ruins, before he’d untethered and drifted off into some sort of endless dream where his awareness is just completely muted.</p><p>When he’d been watching and thinking about <em>Lest</em>— And isn’t that just the greatest irony? Of fucking course <em>he’d</em> be there— he’d be the <em>only other person</em> conscious when it happened.</p><p>And the only <em>other</em> other person there would of course be…</p><p>They would not be this shaken. Maybe that’s the most unfair. If Doug were them, instead, he wouldn’t have to wonder. He wouldn’t have to look at this—oh, huh, when did his sword fall to the floor? when, exactly, did he lose his hold?—and wonder and <em>wonder</em> and think and <em>know</em>, he wouldn’t have to know, with sudden sickening clarity, that he never really got to see his hometown the way it was <em>meant</em> to be seen, and now—</p><p>And now there’s no— there’s no one who—</p><p>The sword glints at him from the ground. It seems to have slid somewhat out of its sheath when it fell, so along with the gold and the silver decorating the handle and the pommel, now the steel of the blade is exposed to the world as well. It’s impossible to describe how much, in what ways, it has all changed in the time between now and when he used it last <em>to lash at the monster that turned into his soulmate</em>.</p><p>Doug doesn’t know much about soulmate magic. He doesn’t know much about magic in general. He’s not sure what the difference is between grey and silver and platinum or why that matters to magic of all things.</p><p>He decides, in this moment, that there is, in fact, impossibly, room for yet more hatred within his heart. It has been a long time since he actively wanted to meet his soulmate. Over a lifetime ago, it had been exciting. It had meant getting to see more of the world, almost certainly, to see something and someplace totally new and utterly different from the small, small slice of the world that he was familiar with.</p><p>All he wants, now, is the polar opposite.</p><p>Doug shifts—he’s not sure why exactly, he just knows he does it because his shaking palms are pressed flat to the floor of his bedroom again—ah, he’s in his <em>bedroom</em>, that’s right—not that it matters—and his hand is getting snagged yet again. His ring. He looks at it, really looks at it, and actively thinks about how he <em>should</em> be feeling bile rise in his throat but instead he just feels dull.</p><p>As dull as, apparently, all of this metal shit has looked his entire life. Funny how things can flip around in opposite ways off the same switch, isn’t it?</p><p>It was fun, once upon a time, to have something that was different, that made him stand out, but now all Doug wishes is that he had a more standard silver ring instead, the way most of the people in his tribe do.</p><p><em>Did</em>, the way they once did, because they don’t, actually, anymore.</p><p>Right.</p><p>Because Doug is sitting in his bedroom, but this is not the same bedroom, this is not the same comfortable bed, this is <em>nothing</em> that any of the others will ever get to see.</p><p>Doug feels hollow, maybe, but far away. Like this room but back when Granny Blossom had first <em>insisted</em> he stay with her, however long he needed—needs—</p><p>Theoretically, Doug thinks, silver is just grey but more.</p><p>Theoretically, people are happy when they meet their soulmates.</p><p>Theoretically, Doug sits there on his floor in his room for some definite period of time, measurable to the precise second with the right tools and interest, and theoretically this time includes the moments when Granny knocks quietly on his door and calls out to him and he does not answer her, and she eventually shuffles off to her own room without him having said “Goodnight” in return.</p><p>Hypothetically, though he doesn’t actually mean to test it, Doug does drift off to sleep at some point, and he dreams of a sight he will never ever see in a sickening technicolor approximation.</p><p>He dreams of eyes he still hasn’t seen watching it with him, from a head lolling boneless and unnatural against a dripping, bloody shoulder, and he dreams he cannot move because he is struggling alone under the weight of a total stranger.</p><p>He has often dreamed of yellow.</p><p>Tonight, he dreams of <em>green</em>.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>My desire to write about Lest's purple eyes vs my desire to fully weaponize Frey's green ones: FIGHT! lol.</p><p>Also, for the record, if it sounds like I'm harping on the green thing a lot, that's just because I headcanon green being Doug's favorite color. His pjs are green, his bed is green, he has not one but two green rugs, a green table mat thing (listen, I stared at his room for an inordinately long time while I drew my art piece for the rfbb, I am now a certified expert on it, lol), and his jacket is even kinda green-blue. Also, green is one of my personal favorite colors ever, esp when I played rf4 for the 1st time. AND... well. Venti is green, too 😎 *jazz hands* it's just the perfect setup for conflicted feelings. (heh. rip Doug all I do is bully him)</p><p>Sorry to make this such a long end note, but real quick, I just wanna plug <a href="https://rfadventurezine.tumblr.com/post/633138217156231168/contributor-applications-now-open-contributor">Level Up!, the RF Adventure Zine</a>! It's a free, digital-only Rune Factory zine, and right now (today is Nov 10, 2020, apps are open until the 27th) we're looking for artists, writers, and cosplayers to feature! So, if any of y'all other fans out there seeing this just so happen to have any interest in participating in a Rune Factory zine, please consider applying! There's lots more info through that link - we do have a twitter for the zine as well but unfortunately I am twitter-illiterate so you only get the tumblr link, my apologies lol. I'm one of the four mods (the beta reading mod, to be precise) and I for one would love to see whatever ideas you might come up with! And if my experience with the rfbb taught me anything, it'll be a great chance to meet other fans of the series and stimulate your creative muscles at the same time, if that's something you're interested in!</p><p>So. That's it for my sales pitch, thanks for sticking with me and all my verbose-ness, and thanks so very much for reading! Esp everyone in the discord, y'all are the real homies, everyone thank them / y'all give yourselves a pat on the back for being the reason this is getting written in such an uncharacteristically timely fashion for me, lol.</p><p>On that topic, guess who is actually on a schedule for once!!! Fingers crossed on this, but my official plan is now to update this fic weekly, and we'll see how it goes from there! So... see ya next Tuesday - this time, with some Comedy™ ;P</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Hey, don't ask me, I just get worked up here.</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>HA HA HA</p><p>Hello friends. Oof. WELL. That's the last time I try to profess my ability to stick to a schedule... What makes it even worse is that when i posted that last chapter this one was about half finished so it really sounded feasible. This is what I get for trying to write something when I didn't already have the main plot fully planned out ahead of time, I guess. Apologies ahaha... unless you're finding this after the fact and don't have to wait. Lucky you then, i guess, lol.</p><p>To everyone who's stuck with me though, thank you! And uh! I'm sorry! Not about the wait this time but uhhhh about how the direction the fic is going has changed slightly?? PLEASE NOTE THE UPDATED TAGS. This chapter and the next specifically will read basically as if they were just the original concept, but after next chap, the updated relationship tag will definitely be coming into play, and I totally understand if you came into this expecting something else (Big Same btw), but things have spiraled very far out of my control and the plot decided to hijack itself so that's just how this one is gonna be now. I hate to change something like that once I'm already in it, but I don't think this one will get done at all unless I chase it to its own natural conclusion. To be fair, I myself just went back and reread the first two chapters and uhhh... I mean, it may have been unintentional but the subtext has certainly been there all along, oops xD But for real, I'm really really sorry to disappoint if this is something you're no longer interested in. I did not plan for this to happen but I guess the characters didn't want to be the only ones forced into unforeseen situations, hah ^^;; Sometimes one determines the course of the fic and sometimes the fic determines the course of the author's mental gymnastics routine as they furiously try to keep pace with the tumbling music. On the other hand, the plot has really slotted itself into place around this and i think it will allow for even deeper explorations of the relationships in this piece, so i definitely have some fun things in store. I hope you'll enjoy them if you decide to hang around!!</p><p>Uh, thanks for letting me ramble, lol. To make up for that and for the wait a little, this chapter is also very long! (like, almost 10k, wtf???) So without further ado, I bring you: <em>not exactly the pure Comedy™ that i promised last time but instead more Doug angst because he just refuses to let me let him be happy in this fic</em> OTL</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>That first week is a bit of a daze. Doug doesn’t even realize how much of one it is until it’s mostly over, honestly.</p><p>He’s working his shift in the shop, bored out of his mind, barely hearing the quiet pitter-patter of light rain outside while his eyes skim over an irritating rainbow of merchandise, when it hits him. He realizes that he has tomorrow off, and he finally puts it together that, huh, that’s just like last week, when he followed Lest. It doesn’t feel like it’s possible that so much time has passed already, but then Doug starts thinking about what all has happened in the interim, and suddenly it feels a little more plausible.</p><p>So, yes, thinking it over, Doug is able to piece together enough of a sequence of events to convince himself he isn’t just reading the calendar wrong, or maybe having one really long, really shitty dream. Capital-T Things that have happened in the week since he and Lest rescued Mysterious Horse Man include the following:</p>
<ul>
<li>As Doug had predicted, the guy had been perfectly fine and woken up after a few days sleeping away in the clinic. And Doug, for the record, was perfectly <em>absolutely </em>fine as he definitely did not think about what might happen once he did wake.</li>
<li>He—and it is a he, specifically a human he, just as Doug had thought, and gee, isn’t he just on a fucking roll with his estimations lately—turned out to not be Water Ruins Amber but rather Water Ruins <em>Dylas</em>.</li>
<li>Water Ruins Dylas, like Amber, like Lest even, does not <em><strike>seem to</strike></em> remember anything about his life before he got here. (Hm. Would it be <em>‘Yokmir Forest Amber’</em>? Doesn’t have the same ring, does it…)</li>
<li>Porcoline readily volunteers to give Water Ruins Dylas his last spare guest room and a job at the restaurant to boot, because of course he does. Doug’s about had it with this town and its damn generosity.</li>
<li>Water Ruins Dylas is an asshole.</li>
<li>Water Ruins Dylas is a <em>fucking asshole</em>, with gorgeous stupid yellow eyes and a permanent scowl and a hell of an attitude problem.</li>
<li>Doug almost collapses with relief, he’s pretty sure, when he realizes just how much of an asshole Water Ruins (WR) Dylas is. It would have been embarrassing, maybe, if he hadn’t been so busy getting into a fight about it.</li>
<li>WR Dylas has the prettiest, shittiest yellow eyes, whose only two modes in Doug’s presence appear to be ‘look at Doug with annoyance’ and ‘look right through Doug as though he doesn’t exist.’ ...What? Did he already mention this one? It’s true, though. And it’s as much of a relief as it is an irritation.</li>
<li>Doug has not spoken four fucking words to Lest since he ditched him that day. If he notices the hurt look that flashes across Lest’s face whenever Doug is a little too obvious about it, well, no he fucking doesn’t. Denial fucking works, okay? If Doug avoids WR Dylas like he’s the plague, he avoids Lest like he’s the goddamn eventual heat death of the universe. Just because it’s there and theoretically inevitable doesn’t mean he has to address it ever in his casual life, right?</li>
</ul><p>Honestly? It’s been a hell of a rough fucking week. Not just because Doug has learned his soulmate is an absolute asshole—frankly, that’s kind of the least of his concerns. And also almost certainly exactly what he deserves, anyway.</p><p>No, the worst part about seeing this guy up and about and most of all, <em>conscious</em>, is that now Doug has some stupid ethical quandry on his hands. Doug is fucking sick of stupid ethical quandries.</p><p>The morally correct thing to do when you happen to somehow first touch your soulmate when they are unconscious is obviously to tell them. It’s kind of—well, okay, it’s <em>definitely</em>—shitty to keep that kind of knowledge secret when you, y’know, have it readily available and ready to go at the forefront of your mind at any and all moments, including and especially when you are in said person’s direct presence. Not to mention, <em>way</em> easier to deal with in the long run, since you won’t have to explain how you’ve known all this time yet said nothing. Which really sounds like the most hassle of all, and it’s not like Doug has ever put <em>that much</em> stock in soulmates anyway. Especially not lately. So the choice should be easy.</p><p>However.</p><p>This is still his enemy he’s talking about, here. Even if the guy himself can’t remember it. Even if, should Doug take the time to really think about the minimal amount of information he has been given by the Sechs in exchange for seeking out and reporting back to them with information of his own, more likely than not this WR Dylas has been, well, <em>WR</em> Dylas, specifically, as in <em>Dylas-who-is-in-the-Water-Ruins</em>, for a long time.</p><p>A long, <em>long</em> time.</p><p>So, the chances are almost certain that this man had nothing to do with what happened to… What happened with all of <em>that</em>, barely mere years ago now. <strike>(Years? Really? Has it been <em>years </em>already? What has Doug been <em>doing?</em>)</strike></p><p>Or at least not directly. There’s no way he was there, at least, and most likely no way he could have possibly known it would happen someday. As a matter of fact, it’s certifiably <em>im</em>possible.</p><p>But. That’s only if Doug thinks long and hard about what he knows and what gaps he’s starting to be able to fill in now that Lest is here and <em>she</em> is talking more, taking risks she never would have back when Doug first arrived. That’s only if Doug takes the time to puzzle anything out in a way that really only brings up more questions than answers. That’s only if Doug questions anything enough to wonder how Lest is the way he is if he’s so chummy with <em>her</em>, whether that means that Lest is a much better fucking liar than Doug’s been giving him credit for, or whether something else just isn’t…</p><p>And, well, anyway. Doug doesn’t do that. It’s just a distraction, and he really doesn’t need to know, so he doesn’t think about it. He’s not exactly the thinking type, not exactly the intelligent type of person who would be able to get anything out of it even if he wanted to, so what does he care?</p><p>He doesn’t. So, of course, all that matters for the shitty goddamn moral dilemma of the month is that WR Dylas is an enemy, and Doug doesn’t owe anything to the people that took everything from him. And, not even to mention—has Doug mentioned it yet, it’s pretty notable—WR Dylas is an <em>asshole</em>. So, like, does he really even deserve general niceties?</p><p>Decorum would say yes. Doug’s not intelligent, but he isn’t a total tool, either, okay. Guy wakes up with no memories, in a time—no, in a <em>place—</em>he isn’t familiar with, and to top it all off, he’s suddenly got color sight with no proper explanation? That shit’s fucked, no matter what kind of person he is. It says way more about Doug than it does about this guy that Doug hasn’t told him yet, no matter what kind of weird noncorporeal mood Doug’s been floating through the week with.</p><p>Maybe that’s why they’re soulmates, though.</p><p>Because Doug knows, he <em>knows</em>, he needs to say something, but he would be lying if he said those thoughts were anything more than empty, hollow words.</p><p>Doug knows he needs to say something, but he also knows he is not going to.</p><p>Maybe if WR Dylas had actually mentioned to anyone that he suddenly has color vision things would be different. Maybe someone else could have said something that would drive Doug to take a kind of pity he hadn’t thought he’d still had and fess up. The problem is that, evidently, WR Dylas has not said a single thing to that effect. The part of Doug’s brain that is fully aware of how stupid he really is offers up the explanation that, hello, perhaps the <em>amnesiac</em> doesn’t even remember what it was like to <em>not</em> have color vision, but from everything Doug’s seen the bastard is also short-spoken and dismissive, so it wouldn’t be out of the question that he just thinks he’s above asking for help, either. Most of the time Doug doesn’t even bother thinking about it.</p><p>Like right now. Definitely not thinking about it.</p><p>The store might be empty at the moment, but that doesn’t mean it feels as empty as Doug would like it to, actually. It’s not just that he can hear the ticking of the wall clock passing away the seconds. No, no, it’s not the hearing, it’s more that he can <em>feel </em>it, a physical needle jabbing relentlessly into his pressure points, over and over, circle by painful circle.</p><p>There has probably never been a time in Doug’s life when he wished he was actively <em>busier</em> with work. Seems this week has just been chock full of surprises and unprecedented occurrences, hasn’t it.</p><p>Thinking about the feeling of the clock leering at him, the amount of time left until the store closes, the amount of time it’s been since it opened, the amount of time it’s been since he went to the Water Ruins, the amount of time it’s been since he <em>still</em> hasn’t done anything—hasn’t done anything about this soulmate disaster, about his goals, about what is ‘just’ and what is not—is… genuinely going to drive him crazy. He thinks he maybe was a little crazy already, but this is too much.</p><p>Doug very, <em>very </em>narrowly avoids throwing down with a wall clock by slamming his hands down on the front desk, loudly, to drown out the unbearable presence of it, and then standing up straight, and then moving the fuck away from the desk and the wall where the clock is entirely and staring blindly at the shelves. Granny’s shelves. The shelves of the Sincerity General Store, shelves which Doug could probably sort through with his eyes closed at this point—not that he cares to test it, or is good at memorizing or anything, but just to say that they’re familiar.</p><p>Actually, they’re more familiar when Doug closes his eyes than when he doesn’t, at present.</p><p>Doug hasn’t actively been trying to test the state of his mental shelf-memorization, but it would perhaps be more accurate to say rather that he <em>‘might as well have been,’</em> considering that his method of restocking merchandise and bringing in new shipments and showing customers where things are lately has been something of a chore performed with eyes half closed, or thinking intently about something else, or with a vague hand-wave-y gesture.</p><p>Because it’s really just. Too much to deal with, too much to think about. Too much to not know and be bothered by not knowing, because Granny does have a book on colors upstairs in her bookshelf but also Doug hasn’t <em>ever</em> touched her books, not even once, he’s almost positive. If it were a more normal occurrence, he would just take a few and hope she doesn’t notice that one of them happens to be the one on color. As it stands, literally nothing could possibly make it more obvious than going anywhere near that shelf. She’s old and she's nowhere near being in the best health of her life, but she’s still far sharper than the blade of Doug’s sword, the one that has been collecting dust from its spot thrown under his bed where he won’t accidentally see it.</p><p>If Doug’s being honest, there’s probably a good chance she already knows everything, and if not that, she might very well suspect, and if not <em>that,</em> she absolutely definitely knows at least that something is up with him, even if she hasn’t had any luck confronting him about it. Still, that doesn’t mean he’s going to go out of his way to give her any ammunition to fire in his direction.</p><p>And so, the book stays on its shelf, and Doug stays stuck in his own personal hell made of things that look just plain wrong in a way he literally has no way of describing.</p><p>He’s getting very close to trying to sneak a peek at someone else’s bookshelves instead, just, you know, real quick-like, out of pure desperation, and maybe he would have if he’d had the opportunity, but mostly he’s been avoiding contact with as many people as he can.</p><p>If he says something offhanded to Kiel, he could probably be persuaded to bring something along very easily, but if he says something offhanded to Kiel, everyone will know what kind of offhanded things he’s saying. If he asks Vishnal or Clorica, they would definitely help him get what he needs, and they would probably be discreet about it if he asked, but he knows without a doubt that he won’t be able to look either of them in their stupid kind doe-eyes as they burn with curiousity and care and not go right ahead and spill his guts, so they’re both out, too.</p><p>Arthur definitely has more than enough of this kind of thing in his study, but Doug complains about all of those exact reading-type things in Arthur’s study just about every time he goes in there, and, well…</p><p>Actually, that one’s a moot point anyway. He will not be going anywhere near Arthur’s study anytime soon because chances are very high that he’ll somehow run into Mr. Water Ruins Asshole, and if he does while he’s <em>looking for information about colors</em>, that’s just. Wow. Yeah, no, that plan is a complete non-starter.</p><p>Xiao Pai? She’s a very good listener, even to someone who complains as much as Doug does, and he’s almost positive she’d be sympathetic—if he were brave and stupid enough to tell her the whole truth. She’ll also yell at him for being an idiot, though, and he’s not particularly in the mood to get chewed out by someone. Especially not someone who’s bound to have a surplus of excellent points to completely counter all of his shitty ones.</p><p>Weirdly, Amber might be Doug’s best bet, in a way, but she’s also the least predictable one out of them all. Not to mention, she lives with Illuminata, and that’s… a whole can of worms Doug refuses to get sucked into.</p><p>…Well, great. Doug has at least managed to waste a whole… four. Four whole minutes. Thinking this through. Super duper.</p><p>He lifts his gaze from where it’s settled like ash on the floor and dusts it off and lets it alight on the shelves in front of him, which are not filled with books but rather an assortment of vegetable seeds. A growing (ha) assortment of vegetable seeds, because Lest keeps—</p><p><em>Nope</em>. Not thinking about him. Not thinking about Lest, or the Castle, or the Rune Spot People-Monsters, or the Rune Sphere things that should apparently be somewhere nearby and how <em>‘if he knew anything about anything surely he should have found a trace of them by now.’</em> That stuff doesn’t exist.</p><p>What <em>does</em> exist is the eyesore of color on color on color that has apparently always adorned this very same wall Doug has gotten so used to looking at for all this time. Unless of course the world is just pulling a cruel trick on him. Maybe everyone is in on the joke and is lying about the fact that any of this was possibly there before. Maybe some powerful being really has flipped a switch, and they just did it with the timing that would inflict the most mental damage to Doug as possible.</p><p>Even without being able to read an actual book of colors, Doug is pretty sure he’s kinda figured some of this out. There’s yellow, of course—<em>corn, pineapple, the packaging of the bok choy and cabbage seed bags.</em> And there’s also the… green, the stuff that paints all the trees and the bushes outside, and apparently, coincidentally, the sheets Granny gave him for his bed as well, how about that—<em>spinach, green pepper, pumpkin, cucumber</em>. The sky is supposedly blue, though Doug knows very well now that that isn’t always the case; nevertheless, if he assumes that the color it is for most of the day while the sun is out (and it’s clear, not while it’s cloudy and raining on and off like it’s been today) must be blue, then there’s another color off his list—<em>the sour drop packaging, maybe the corn seed bags if he really stretches his imagination, although it’s so much </em>darker<em> that it’s hard to know for sure if you can really still call it the same thing.</em></p><p>So that’s three, at least. He also knows silver and gold, but he’s not talking about either of those right now, so that’s entirely unimportant. They aren’t rainbow colors, anyway, so they’re not as useful to know. Probably.</p><p>Truthfully, he hasn’t properly looked in a mirror since… <em>y’know</em>, but if he did, he could be more sure on red, as well. Since, supposedly, his hair is red. <strike>(He could see this even without a mirror, but if he’s been a little more diligent in keeping his hair out of his face than usual this past week, that’s just because it’s starting to get warmer out, or something. Shut up, it makes sense.)</strike> And supposedly red is close to pink, too, because one time back home a couple of his friends had gotten into a very heated discussion about whether or not pink was light red and if you could describe Doug’s hair as pink if you wanted, and it had probably been to get a rise out of Doug because they’d known he still couldn’t see color like they could, but he… he had… and they…</p><p>Ah, right! Pink! Pink is another color Doug can know, isn’t it. That’s something else to look at. Right this second. Pink melons were always his uncle’s favorite fruit, because apparently they reminded him of his husband’s—Doug’s father’s brother’s—hair. Doug is going to look at the pink melon seeds now and commit the color pink to his memory. Great. Look at that. Pink. Incredibly interesting and conveniently distracting.</p><p>Now that he thinks about it, aren’t tomatoes ‘red’? He’s definitely heard Jones say something about that before. Huh. So that’s <em>‘red.’</em> Cool.</p><p>Okay. Less cool.</p><p>Slight problem, actually.</p><p>The thing is, and this is crucial—Doug may or may not only know the common names for colors and things that correspond to them<em> in his native language.</em> And, well. It is <em>possible</em> that <em>maybe </em>he never bothered to learn the human words for colors. What would that mean to him, anyway? He knows the important ones: <em>‘yellow’</em> and <em>‘silver’</em> and <em>‘gold.’ </em>And also, apparently, <em>‘red.’</em></p><p>He actually even knows some unimportant things, like <em>‘blonde’</em> and <em>‘brunette,’</em> which “of course” are apparently not actual colors themselves but are instead specific hair-color descriptive words. Great. Wonderful.</p><p>Not helpful in the slightest. <em>Which color is </em>‘red,’<em> exactly?</em></p><p>Although at this point, would it even help Doug to know the difference? Maybe it isn’t even worth it to learn to translate them. Maybe he should just march upstairs and snatch the book off the shelf—a book he is only now realizing definitely does not contain any of the color-names he grew up with and knows—and he should just purge all the other useless info from his brain because even any other dwarves he runs into in Selphia or in Sechs are unlikely to speak dwarvish in their daily lives.</p><p>It’s not that Doug hasn’t had similar revelations on the idea of not having any real reason to speak his first language anymore before. It’s just…</p><p>What is it, actually? It’s bothersome, is what it is. Annoying. Unbelievably frustrating.</p><p>It’s just that never before have any of those revelations come with the sense that leaving those other things behind means moving on so completely that there isn’t any connection at all. Even if he does go out of his way to find a proper translation of the words for the colors between this language and that one, he’ll never be able to ask his family or his elders or his friends or his neighbors to explain it to him the way they would have, and he’ll never know if the words written on the page are exactly right, because who could he confirm that with?</p><p>Learning new words for colors he couldn’t ever see before isn’t going to allow him to view the scenes living in his memory any differently than he does now, and isn’t that terrifying? He’s young still, sometimes he forgets this, sometimes he forgets that if he doesn’t manage to get himself killed doing this whole thing—which, of course, is certainly likely, but if he doesn’t, somehow—then he’ll have to live the rest of his life, still, and to that end, he’s far, far too young.</p><p>How many years of this will it take before it warps his memories? If he gets used to <em>this</em>, now, the way things are and will continue to be as many years as he continues to live, will that make everything from before slip through his fingers even further? Everything gives him a headache now, but even then he’s not as out of it as he was a few days ago. Will the past seem somehow lesser for what it’s lacking, now that he’s aware of what was missing?</p><p>Doug has been dreaming in color, and he’s been jolting himself awake far too early every morning since That Day. Which really only brings more color with it, of course, more clear and vibrant than when it’s only in his subconscious. That’s already a huge difference from a week ago, is it not?</p><p>He shuffles some things around on the shelf aimlessly. He was right before, of course—touching these things, even with the change, is no different in any way than it was prior. He doesn’t flinch as much at the sight of his own skin as he did at first.</p><p>And, well, no matter what he thinks of it, there’s nothing he can really do about it, is there? This is reality now. There’s no going back, there’s no off switch.</p><p>Against better judgement, Doug is struck by the urge to check the clock again. As is to be expected, he regrets it immediately, because it somehow <em>still</em> isn’t quite closing time, and all checking really does is make him aware all over again of the ceaseless needling of the clock hands turning.</p><p>He sighs, turns back to the pointless task at hand, moves some seed bags over a whole inch on the shelves, bag after bag, row after row.</p><p>No one would call Doug a methodical person, least of all himself, but he pays painstaking, all-consuming attention to lining the stupid things up perfectly. Not that it’ll matter when Lest’s next harvest comes in and he destroys all semblance of order in the seed section of the shop with whatever insane amount of the things he decides he needs this time—would it kill the guy to maybe send ahead with some numbers so Doug doesn’t have to do all the math for the cost on the spot? Not that Doug can’t do it, but it’s just such a <em>hassle</em>. It always seems like Lest has some kind of plan for his fields, but then again, it always <em>seems</em> like he does, and what does Doug really know about what goes on in that fool’s…</p><p>Well, whatever. The less Doug knows about it, the better. Or, at least, Doug only really needs to worry about a few very specific things that may or may not go through Lest’s head and not all the superfluous… other stuff. The daily living stuff.</p><p>Because, of course, the guy does have a life he lives daily, doing shit like buying obscene amounts of seeds all at once and shipping crops of seemingly ever-increasing quality and going out of his way to talk to all the people all the time. But, <em>of course</em>, that stuff doesn’t matter to Doug’s mission, the same way it hadn’t mattered on a much, much larger scale when Doug <em>helped Lest in the Water Ruins and therefore inadvertently helped free his own soulmate in the process.</em></p><p>Doug is very busy being very good at not thinking very hard about all of this—or very possibly, just, at not thinking in general—and so he very nearly doesn’t notice it when he runs out of seed bag shelves to fiddle with. But, hey, actually, that’s an idea: when was the last time the shelves themselves got moved at all? Maybe the crevice between them and the wall behind them needs to be cleaned out, or whatever, and of course Granny won’t be doing that on her own, so it’d probably be for the best to just get that out of the way before she asks.</p><p>Doug frowns at the shelves. The shelves don’t frown back, but he almost wishes they would.</p><p>Well, what has he got to lose? It’s not like he has anything better to do right now, right?</p><p>Ignoring the way that moving the shelves will completely do away with all the work he just put into lining everything up on them (it’s not like he really cared about that anyway), Doug goes ahead and invites the greatest chance of possible disaster by starting to lever and shimmy one of the shelves away from the wall without first removing a single piece of merchandise from it. Fuck it, right?</p><p>Unfortunately, nothing actually falls off, and he does manage to make a gap to the wall behind the shelf, which means he kind of has to go through with cleaning it, now.</p><p>He should probably go get a broom, or maybe a mop, or at the very least a duster or rag, but part of him wants to just go crawl behind the shelf and lie face down in the dirt and the dust and whatever-the-fuck-else that has built up back there for however long, probably since shortly after he first arrived, the one and only time Granny had made him help her do a deep-cleaning of the whole shop.</p><p>Well, concerns of cleanliness aside, maybe wanting to lay in the dust behind the shop shelves is… not the best sign.</p><p>Hm.</p><p>As he’s shoving those particular thoughts deep into the back of his mind where he can avoid dealing with them entirely, the front door swings open. The jingle of the ‘Customer-Attracting Super Chimes’ that Bado had tried to sell to to all the shop owners in Selphia (and then had been subsequently forced to give away to everyone for free after Forte had caught wind of what he was doing) is enough to jostle Doug out of his own head bad enough that his elbow slams—<em>hard</em>—into the edge of the shelf he’d moved as he flinches and starts to turn around.</p><p>On the one hand, right, duh—not being closed yet means that customers could still be coming in late, no matter how slow the rest of the day has been, <em>dumbass</em>. Now probably isn’t the best time to be doing something like this, at least not while he’s the only one working the store.</p><p>On the other hand? <em>Fuck, the shelf!!</em></p><p>It teeters dangerously on its edge, threatening to not only fall to the floor itself but also to possibly fall into the shelving in the middle of the shop and take that with it, too. Thankfully, he manages to catch it before it topples over or anything, which is great, and even most of the things stacked on it stay put, which is a fairly cool bonus. There are still plenty of things that slip off and clatter to the floor before he can stop them from falling, though.</p><p>Doug sighs and rubs at his arm, trying not to think about how big a bruise he’s going to get from simply standing around doing shit all. Well, at least now there’s something to do for the rest of his work day. Possibly several somethings. Speaking of which…</p><p>After one last check that the shelves are solidly resting on the floor once more, Doug wipes his hands on his shorts (somewhat uselessly, but it’s more a habit or a nervous tic than actually necessary) and finally turns around to face the door. There’s an apology on his lips, but before he can offer it, he’s being laughed at in a very familiar way.</p><p>“Dear me, perhaps I should begin knocking before I come in?” Granny Blossom asks, doing absolutely nothing to hide her mirth.</p><p>The relief Doug feels is so acute that he doesn’t react at all for a solid second or two. Her grin is wide and playful, even while she waits, but there’s something in her eyes… concern, maybe? Doug’s getting really sick of seeing that everywhere.</p><p>It’s not Granny’s fault though, so he does his best to not take his frustration out on her.</p><p>He sighs again, but somewhat exaggeratedly loudly this time (putting on airs, rather literally) and leans back heavily against the very shelf he just settled, as though asking for it to get tipped over again. The picture of put-upon nonchalance. He’d pat himself on the back if that wouldn’t ruin the whole act.</p><p>“Trying to give me a freakin’ heart attack, Granny? And here I was trying to do something nice for you.”</p><p>She hums, walking closer to peer at the shelf and the empty space lurking openly behind it.</p><p>“Oh, is that what’s going on here? I don’t suppose your new passion is for interior decorating?”</p><p>Doug scoffs and raps the shelf with his knuckles and sarcastically retorts, “Yeah, exactly. What’d’ya think? I should definitely pursue a career in it, right?”</p><p>it’s all very ordinary and routine, and that makes it easy to pretend to be playing the part of himself, the role he’s settled into here with her. He’s banking on that familiarity to lull her into a sense of normalcy, to distract her from noticing that anything’s off. Not that it is, of course.</p><p>Fake it ‘til you make it, or die trying. Or something like that.</p><p>For the moment, it seems to be working. In a way that’s very in line with their usual rapport, Granny replies haughtily, “I think not. Did you think you could just run out on your contract before I found a replacement for you?”</p><p>The laugh Doug huffs at this is authentic, and so is he when he complains, “Gran, I don’t have a contract.”</p><p>“Sure you do,” she quips, smug, “It’s called: ‘my spare room.’”</p><p>“Ah.” Well, she’s got him there.</p><p>“‘All the furniture in that room.’”</p><p>“That’s—”</p><p>“‘Access to all the basic amenities…’”</p><p>“<em>Gran</em>—”</p><p>“And, also: ‘all the food in my refrigerator that isn’t made of yeast and flour.’”</p><p>“Alright, alright! Yeesh, I get it already!” He throws his hands in the air to prove that she’s won and kicks off the shelf, walking around to the side that things have fallen off of. Dramatically, he continues, “Guess I’ll just have to put all this stuff back then, even though the feng shui in here really sucks. No one appreciates my help around here.”</p><p>Granny lightly whaps him in the side of his thigh with her cane as he kneels down, shaking her head. “Aw, you poor thing. Boo hoo.”</p><p>“Ouch,” Doug gasps, slapping an indignant hand over his heart rather than his leg. The wound to his pride obviously stings far more than any tap of her cane ever could. “<em>Granny!</em>”</p><p>“Eh, you’ll live,” she replies easily, smiling as she turns to walk over to the front desk of the shop.</p><p>Doug would argue with that one a little more, except that the look on her face isn’t quite as inquiring as it had been when she walked in, and he doesn’t really want to fuck all his hard work up now by saying anything that’s going to get him thrown back under her scrutiny. There’s no way he’d get out of <em>that </em>alive, at least.</p><p>So instead, he simply <em>tsks</em> and turns back to cleaning up all the stuff he’d knocked over. Since he’d knocked into one of the seed shelves, most of everything scattered on the ground is, predictably, seed bags. He picks a few of them up and squints at them. Is it bad to just throw them directly back onto the shelf after they’ve been on the floor? They are <em>seed</em> bags, though. Doug can’t imagine anyone—least of all Lest, not that he’s thinking about him specifically—worrying about getting their hands dirty while they’re actively planting shit in the ground. The fairly-frequently sweeped floor of the shop is undoubtedly less dirty than, well, actual dirt.</p><p>He decides it’s fine, and when he starts reshelving things, Granny Blossom doesn’t yell at him or anything, so he figures he’s in the clear.</p><p>He shuffles around and picks up all the bags off the floor, piling them in front of him and barely looking at them as he sets them back in their places. It’s usually a boring chore to have to stock the shelves, but right now it’s kind of nice to lose himself in the simplicity of it.</p><p>He’s almost finished putting everything back in its place when Granny calls, “…Doug?”</p><p>There’s a slightly strained quality to her tone that makes him very unenthused to answer, though maybe that’s just all his recent paranoia talking. Still, if he fucked up something in the books or didn’t put all the money away properly or, worse, something’s missing from the till entirely, he’d rather put off facing her wrath about it for as long as possible.</p><p>Pretending to be very, very absorbed by the whole reshelving process, and without turning around, Doug replies, “Hmm?”</p><p>“I… was thinking about what I should make for dinner, and I think we still have some of those fresh eggs and leeks that Lest brought me the other day.”</p><p>Doug, shockingly, manages not to flinch at the sound of Lest’s name—not that he’d have any reason to—and tries to focus on the whole <em>dinner</em> thing rather than the slightly weird way Granny’s bringing it up. It’s probably just the lingering sense of malaise that’s coating Doug’s entire life right now, anyway.</p><p>That said, Doug isn’t really sure if she wants him to respond to that or not. When the pause gets ever-so-slightly too uncomfortably long, he feels the need to say <em>something</em> to fill the silence.</p><p>"Er… okay?” He glances over his shoulder and finds her looking intently at him, and he doesn’t really want to deal with making direct eye contact with her too long lest he somehow finds his long-lost conscience and spills his guts to her, so he turns back to the task at hand as he continues, “Uh, are you asking me if I want to eat eggs and leek for dinner?”</p><p>Granny’s a pretty darn good chef if Doug may say so, and anything that means Doug doesn’t have to bother cooking for himself is good news. Not that he’s actually that bad of a cook or anything, but it just takes way too long, and there’s <em>way</em> too much cleaning up involved after. So he won’t complain, if she’s offering to do it for them both, but that doesn’t mean he understands what she’s getting at with this line of conversation, necessarily.</p><p>She laughs, but it’s probably just his imagination that it’s slightly forced, right? Right. He really has to get this whole paranoia thing under control; it’s pretty annoying. There’s just something he can’t seem to let go of though… some kind of quality to her tone he can’t quite place but can only assume means trouble (for him, obviously)...</p><p>Still clearly smiling, she says, “Well, in a way, I suppose you could say that, yes. What I had in mind was something more along the lines of fried rice, but if you’d rather have just the egg and vegetables on their own without the rice, I’m sure that could be arranged.”</p><p>“Whoa, whoa, whoa.” Doug drops everything and spins back around again. Is that what the weirdness was about? Maybe she’s just worried about spoiling him or something. Whatever the motivation is though, it doesn’t really matter anymore. Consider Doug’s attention caught. “No, no, that’s cool, let’s just go with your idea. I mean, uh, I’d really hate to make you change your plans for me or anything. Y’know.”</p><p>“Oh, is that so?” she asks, but the smirk on her face is incredibly telling.</p><p>Doug knows she would only bring it up because she actually meant to go through with it, so he isn’t really worried about her messing with him in regards to the meal she’s going to make tonight. In terms of other things, it is <em>very</em> likely she’s messing with him, but if the food itself is secured then the rest of it isn’t really all that important. Can he be blamed if he wants a nice meal to distract him from everything else going on? It’s not something to take for granted, alright?</p><p>“Very right,” Doug says, throwing back an overly sunny smile of his own. It actually almost hurts, not because he’s faking it or anything, but because he belatedly realizes it might very well be the first and only genuine wide smile his face has contorted itself into all week.</p><p>He… doesn’t really want to unpack all of that when he could be thinking about dinner instead, though, so he largely ignores the strain in his cheeks and instead busies his hands with sorting through the miscellaneous seed bags he has collected off the ground.</p><p>There is a pause in the conversation—an awkward one. Not just a lull or a comfortable silence. Okay, fine, Doug will acknowledge it. That is… decidedly strange. It’s been a very long time since he felt such a stilted, unnatural break when talking with Granny Blossom.</p><p>But when did that happen, anyway? When had they gotten so accustomed to each other that something like this feels so uncomfortable?</p><p>When had they stopped being strangers; when had Doug stopped seeing this as merely a place he lived; when had he stopped seeing her as just his boss, as just someone he could take advantage of to make a living for himself here in the meantime, while he made sure his goals were achieved?</p><p>These people were supposed to be strangers. Targets, perhaps. What is he supposed to do if…</p><p>“Well,” Granny starts, slipping through the tension, if not quite dispersing it entirely, “if you have everything handled here with closing up the shop, I suppose I ought to head upstairs.”</p><p>“Uh, yeah, ‘course, no problem. I’ve got it,” Doug replies, silently thanking her for cutting off his wayward thoughts.</p><p>And it really isn’t a problem, either. Technically, today was his day to man the shop, so it’s his responsibility to close up regardless, but he’ll very gladly take the excuse, if it means he can ignore both his own thoughts and the strange <em>thing</em> that seems to be hanging heavily in the air. He’d honestly rather not know what it is, really.</p><p>Maybe Granny can’t feel it, or maybe it’s entirely in Doug’s head, but she sounds pretty dang natural when she responds, “Wonderful. Then, I’ll see you in a few— Ah, hold on.”</p><p>And, shit. Maybe he celebrated too soon, because he hears her footsteps pause on their way toward the stairs, and he’s pretty sure she turns back around while she’s at it. He can feel her eyes on him, but he doesn’t look to check if he’s right, instead reaching up to put some of the last few seeds he has back in place.</p><p>“Hm. If I’m not mistaken, I believe we may have run out of our soy sauce upstairs the other day. Would you be a dear and pass me one of the red ones from the shelf? I’ll mark it down in the books for you.”</p><p>“Huh? Yeah, sure.” Is that all? He reaches up to the shelf next to the one he’s kneeling beside and snags one, holding it out behind him. When she doesn’t take it from him right away, he twists in his crouch to look at her and feels that same suffocating silence creeping in on him again, so he continues offhandedly, desperate to ignore the strangeness in the air, “Er, why, though? Thought you liked the low-salt ones better ever since Jones told you about that whole good eating… habits… thi…ng…”</p><p>Doug stares blankly at a fixed point somewhere in the space between Granny Blossom’s face and the red-capped bottle of soy sauce confidently extended toward her resting innocently in his own stupid, idiot hand.</p><p>MOTHER<em>FUCK.</em></p><p>Sometimes, you just have one of those days.</p><p>Feels like Doug’s had more of a month of them. Maybe longer. Like he’s been having <em>one of those days</em> every day since Lest was shoved off of that stupid goddamn airship.</p><p>Of course, this particular day, maybe, if he hadn’t just stuffed his own foot so far down his throat, he would have been able to wiggle his way out of this conversation. He’d been so worried about getting Blossom to drop her guard and relax in the familiarity of their routines that he’d completely forgotten the part where <em>he</em> was supposed to <em>not do that</em>.</p><p>Was that what was up with the fucking mood this whole time? How long had she been intending to try to entrap him like that? He’d known there was no way he’d be able to keep it from her forever, but he’d really thought he’d been doing better than that. He’d thought he’d have more time to figure out what he was going to do once she did realize.</p><p>It’s his own fucking fault her trick had worked <em>so fucking well</em>, too. Him and his big fucking mouth. Couldn’t he just not talk for like two fucking seconds? Couldn’t he notice a leading fucking question when he heard one?</p><p>Fuck.</p><p>And the worst part is, if she had asked him for <em>literally any other color of thing</em>, he wouldn’t have been ensnared so absolutely and undeniably. He would have either not known what she was talking about because he didn’t recognize the word and asked what it meant and then he’d have been free to fake his reaction to being asked about a color, or she would have been asking him about the color <em>yellow</em>, which he is Very Aware Of and has been <em>very careful</em> about discussing with <em>everyone</em> since he came here, Blossom included.</p><p>Not that he’d known something like <em>this</em> was going to fucking happen. At first it had been more because he didn’t want to give any of these people anything on him, because he’d wanted to keep them all at a distance, because he was <em>spying</em> and the logical thing to do as a <em>spy</em> is to not give out personal information. And, honestly, at first it didn’t really come up, anyway. And he’d been quick to express a lack of interest in the whole soulmate thing, so people who wanted to gossip about that went elsewhere. Problem solved.</p><p>So it’s really just his absolute fucking luck that the word to come out of her mouth would be the one he had just so happened to hear Jones talking about, the one that he’d literally <em>just</em> checked and figured out and associated with its corresponding color, like, ten minutes ago. <em>Of fucking course.</em></p><p>But! It’s fine. It’s <em>fine</em>.</p><p>It’s not too late to talk his way out of this one, right? He still has the one final last-ditch ace up his sleeve, after all. Since he’s never shared the actual truth before, he can just pretend <em>red </em>is his color, the color of his soulmate’s eyes. That’s why he knows it, of course! Easy peasy. No fucking sweat. Deep breath in, and—</p><p>And Blossom is already saying, “Well, I’ll be. And here I thought I’d be needing to get my eyes checked for sure, watching you sorting through those seed bags like that.” She sounds surprised, or maybe a little excited, and not at all as vindictively pleased with herself as she should—as he wishes she were—for having so expertly torn through all of his defenses.</p><p>And, Doug? Doug is perfectly calm, and rational, and holding what certainly will not be his own undoing. Cucumbers (<em>which are green, just like the low-sodium soy sauce bottles Granny prefers, </em>provides the traitorous and highly unwelcome little voice in the back of Doug’s head) wish they were as cool as he is right now.</p><p>He swallows down the spike of anxiety <em>that he doesn’t have</em> and looks Granny in her eyes and very eloquently squeaks, “Wha?”</p><p>Blossom laughs—usually a very nice sound, if maybe a little too often directed at Doug’s direct detriment—and though it doesn’t sound unkind in the least, it still sends currents of dread rippling down his back. She smiles, eyebrows slightly raised, but also slightly pinched and upturned, and Doug kind of wishes he actually <em>had </em>thrown down with the damn clock earlier, and <em>lost, </em>so that at least he wouldn’t have to see her pity so clearly written on her face.</p><p>She smiles, and he has no idea what his own face is doing but he has a sneaking suspicion that whatever it is, it ain’t a smile in return. Especially when she reaches out and pries the soy sauce from his somewhat-too-clenched grip and sets it back in its place on the shelf.</p><p>Even more so when she chuckles and says, “Sorry, dear. Perhaps that trick was a little too mean. But, goodness, I was so sure these old eyes of mine were seeing things. To think, all this time I thought you already had your colors!”</p><p>Doug would insist that he’s doing his best to hold very, very still so he doesn’t do or say anything <em>else</em> that could expose him somehow… if he thought he could get away with claiming that. The truth of the matter is that things have taken such a turn that he suddenly feels a little more like he’s moving in slow motion. Banished deep underwater, where he’s slowly drowning. Distantly, he thinks his mouth might be gaping not unlike a fish’s, so it makes sense, doesn’t it?</p><p>It would probably be best to remain still all the same, do his best impression of a stone statue sinking down into the vast dark, but he fucks that up pretty quickly. Unbidden, he haltingly says, “You… thought that…”</p><p>“I’m sorry, Doug, I didn’t mean to presume, really.” How can she look so gentle, so kind, so <em>warm</em>, while Doug feels like he’s going numb, like his blood is freezing itself solid in its veins? She sets a hand softly on his shoulder, and it <em>burns</em>. “I knew you didn’t want to talk about all that soulmate business, so I never asked.”</p><p>“O-oh.”</p><p>Is that what everyone thought? When they gossiped about this stuff, did they talk about him, after all? Were they not talking to him about it not because they were uninterested, or because he was, but rather because they were too scared to ask? Because they pitied him too much?</p><p>He stands abruptly, jostling Blossom’s hand off his shoulder.</p><p>“Oh,” Doug laughs, possibly sounding half-crazed (probably sounding full-crazed), “Oh! You really— I, uh, I mean, yeah, of <em>course</em>! Ha. Obviously, the truth is that I met them a long time ago. Absolutely. You know me! Always referring to the colors of things and all that shit!”</p><p>Blossom’s brow pinches. She’s looking increasingly concerned the more Doug does a piss-poor job trying to somehow laugh this off, but even still he can’t seem to stop. He doesn’t like the way her laugh lines go slack, the way her face rearranges itself into something that looks older, more tired.</p><p>He doesn’t like that he notices the difference.</p><p>She says, carefully, “I suppose I was under the assumption you didn’t know the words for them in this language. That’s no excuse, but—”</p><p>“Hah! No fucking way,” he cuts, more to himself than to her, laughing harshly at the awful irony of it all.</p><p>Even he can hear that he’s getting nasty, now. It feels like there’s an edge sharpening itself on his tongue, he can practically taste it, but he’s not quite sure that’s something he has under his control, anymore. Or maybe he was only under the illusion that he had ever had control of any of it this whole time.</p><p>It’s just, like, how fucking perfect. How could every single thing pile up to collapse in on itself at the same time? <em>Any other color</em>. That’s the difference between a complete breakdown and an average, relatively pleasant (if not completely truthful) evening.</p><p>She’d been so right about him, and so, so wrong.</p><p>Hell, if that doesn’t just sum up their whole relationship perfectly. She knows him—she knows him the best out of <em>anyone</em>, anymore, and even still she knows <em>nothing</em> about him. So what does that say about him?</p><p>Maybe it’ll help to get that out of the way now. It won’t make sense to her; after all, from her perspective, hadn’t they only just been bantering the way they usually do? There’s nothing to account for the change, is there? But if he could just know that he <em>tried</em>, that he provided the out for her before it was too late, then maybe…</p><p>No, he’s still just as pathetic as before, possibly more so, if he’s trying to justify this shit even after everything. He just never intended to get anyone caught up in his messes that didn’t deserve to be there. He’s not mad at her, not even a little, but how can he punish himself without also hurting her?</p><p>Who is he kidding, anyway? It’s way past too late to pretend to be some sort of stranger who just happens to be living here.</p><p>And that’s—</p><p>That’s not something he can deal with, not right now. If he was even dealing with it before.</p><p>“Doug…” She sounds so <em>sad</em>. He doesn’t deserve that, he doesn’t deserve sympathy from her. “What’s wrong? Please, I know something has been bothering you all week. You don’t have to explain your soulmate to me, but you know you can talk to me about anything, right? Even if you don’t think it’s something an old woman like me can help with, I want to hear about it.”</p><p><em>You say that now</em>, he wants to say, but he bites his tongue hard enough to hurt.</p><p>The pain would be grounding if it weren’t for the rotten sense of déjà vu this is all giving him. Doug looks at Granny Blossom, and he instantly wishes he hasn’t. Because on top of just seeing <em>her</em>, looking at <em>him</em>, like <em>that</em>, he also sees a shadow of the expression <em>Lest</em> had been wearing a week ago, when he’d told Doug the very same thing right before Doug straight up ditched him to make him deal with taking Water Ruins Dylas to the clinic on his own.</p><p>Why is it that the people Doug could hurt the most, and the most easily, are the ones who seem to be just begging him to go right ahead and do it? It’s not fucking fair.</p><p>“Granny, that’s…”</p><p>There’s a moment. A moment of weakness or strength, Doug isn’t sure. He isn’t sure he wants to know, either. Regardless, there’s a moment he almost does it. He’s meeting her eyes directly, and he’s letting her offer, her request, bounce around his head, and he’s rolling the words around his own mouth, and he almost tells her—he almost tells her <em>everything</em>.</p><p>And then one of the bags of seeds Doug had haphazardly thrown onto the shelf right before this whole debacle loses its battle with gravity, and as it topples back to the floor, so too does Doug’s bravery—or his cowardice—and he swallows all the words back down into his gut.</p><p>Hearing the sound of the bag hitting the floor feels like waking up, and suddenly he can hear the rain softly pattering on the windows and the roof, that damn clock’s ticking, the rapid beating of his own heartbeat in his ears. Suddenly he’s just himself again, and nothing more. And that person is not a kid anymore, even if he wishes he was. There are some problems that can’t be solved by just running to a trusted adult and believing they can fix everything.</p><p>Besides, that would be admitting that he trusts her, that he sees Blossom as someone who could be there for him, like that.</p><p>Doug may be stupid, but he’s not braindead. He knows. Of course, he knows. But knowing and admitting are two very different things. He may know why he’s here and he may know who his soulmate is, but he has yet to admit to either, and that makes a world of difference.</p><p>He knows why he almost tells Granny, but he doesn’t admit it. How can he?</p><p>She’s waiting, too patient and too attentive, for him to continue, and as much as he hates to disappoint her, this is really the least disappointing option he has.</p><p>If he tells himself that enough, surely he’ll begin to believe it.</p><p>“I’m fine,” he says, finally, firmly, falsely, and he can see the way the light dims in Blossom’s eyes for just a moment before it sparks up again.</p><p>It would be far too easy for him if she were the type of person to just give up when she encounters an obstacle. Unfortunately, he isn’t that kind of person either, or, well, at the fucking least, he’s trying his very best not to be, and for once that effort seems to be enough, just barely.</p><p>Before she can give him hell—hell which he certainly deserves—Doug continues, “Actually, I was just thinking about how there was something I <em>totally </em>forgot to do earlier. So stupid. Like, ugh, what was I thinking? Don’t know where my head’s been at lately.”</p><p>He laughs, and it’s genuine enough. For real, what <em>has</em> he been thinking? Where <em>has</em> his head been lately?</p><p>“Doug…”</p><p>“And, hey, thanks, I really appreciate it.” It’s really hard to say whether this is the truth or another lie, but it doesn’t particularly matter either way. He forces a smile they are both painfully aware is fake onto his face and this time he knows for sure that it’s a lie when he says, “I’ll be sure to tell you if anything comes up, okay?”</p><p>“<em>Doug—</em>”</p><p>“I’ll be back later, Gran! Just as soon as I take care of this. Bye!”</p><p>“Doug, wait, please—”</p><p>She doesn’t try very hard to stop him, all things considered. Of course, Doug’s much stronger than she is, at least physically, so there’s hardly any way she could prevent him from leaving by force. However, they both know that if she really got in his way, he wouldn’t be able to bring himself to push past her or knock her aside or <em>worse </em>to get away from her, no matter how desperate he is to escape.</p><p>But she lets him dodge his way past her, and she does call after him, but even after he all but flings himself through the front door and out into the street, she doesn’t make any moves to follow him, not even just to yell at him from the stoop as he runs away.</p><p>As the door swings closed behind him, he could swear he hears her sigh.</p><p>“Stubborn, foolish child…”</p><p>He can’t exactly say he disagrees with her.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>As always, thanks so much for reading! Shoutout to the RF writers' server for encouraging my loss of sanity &lt;3 you guys are the worst in the best way &lt;3 (totally kidding btw. y'all rock, full stop, thank you so much for all of your encouragement!!)</p><p>If you've made it this far, hopefully you can be as excited to see the additional dynamics play out as you were before I committed to them! I have some fun things planned now that wouldn't have been possible previously, and it has also forced this fic to become longer than it would have been haha... Peep that chapter count climbing ever higher lmao</p><p>I'm not going to make any promises this time about updates, but I will say that this chapter was actually not supposed to end here and I had to chop it in half, and on top of that I am very excited for it because i FINALLY get to write Dylas being conscious, lmao, which was definitely supposed to happen this chapter before Doug decided to have a whole crisis about his relationship with Blossom. <em>squints</em>. Soooooo, all that to say that hopefully the wait won't be quite as long this time! </p><p>Happy new year!! Hope y'all are staying safe and healthy out there &lt;3</p>
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